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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

Anna Karenina $1.75 

Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth . . 1.50 

Ivan Ilyitch 1.25 

My Religion 1.00 

What to Do ? 1.25 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL AND COMPANY, 

publishers, 

13 Astor Place, New York. 



MY CONFESSION 



AND 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING 



BY 



COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOI 



^Translates from tfje Russian 




NEW YORK 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

No. 13 Astor Place 



\ 



-5 



Copyright, 1887, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 



*-3ff 



CONTENTS. 



MY CONFESSION. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — Youthful beliefs — Precocious scepticism — Athe- 

ism at college — Demetry Tolstoi's mysticism — 
How one ceases to believe — Orthodoxy not a 
security for virtue — History of S. — Faith in 
perfection 1 

II. — Youthful passions — The author begins to write 

— Theories of creative artists regarding life — 
That they are superior beings and that their voca- 
tion is the instruction of mankind — The author 
refuses to believe this — The true desire of the 
apostles of culture is to receive as much money 
and as much praise as possible 9 

III. — The author travels — His faith in perfection 
increased by his contact with European civiliza- 
tion — This faith shattered by witnessing the 
execution of a criminal at Paris — Death of the 
author's brother — The author establishes peasant 
schools — New travels abroad — Judicial service, 
teaching, journalism — Mental disease — Depart- 
ure for the Steppes — Marriage — The influence 
of family life — The author continues to write — 
A crisis — Life has no joys if we do not know its 
meaning — Morally speaking, the author feels 
himself incapable of life ......... 11 

v 



VI CONTENTS. 

IV. — Life an absurdity — Suicide contemplated — 
Meanwhile the author lives in luxury and his 
physical health is perfect — Life an ugly practical 
joke played by some unknown power — There is 
nothing, there never was anything, there never 
will be anything in life — An Oriental fable — The 
impossibility of not thinking — The terrors of un- 
certainty — Immediate death far preferable ... 26 

V. — Looking for the secret of life — Exact sciences — 

Theoretical sciences — Cessation of development 
— Science ignores the question of life — The 
search after theories — The emptiness of philos- 
ophy . 36 

VI. — Man astray — What is the meaning of life? — 
Socrates — Schopenhauer — Solomon — Buddha — 
Death worth more than life — Life should be 
surrendered 48 

VII. — Four methods — Ignorance — Epicureanism — 
Suicide — Acquiescence — Do not realize that life 
is absurd — Get what you can out of life and 
never think of the future — Understand that life 
is an evil and kill yourself — Know that life is 
unprofitable and still live — The author asks him- 
self if he has ignored any essential fact or if there 

is any error in his reasoning 62 

VIIL — Where is the mistake ? — The author has con- 
sidered only the artificial life of his own class — 
He believed that the life of the masses was of no 
consequence — And yet the masses formulate the 
question of life and solve it with astonishing 
clearness — But their solution is founded on a 
faith which the author no longer possesses — A 
terrible dilemma 72 



CONTENTS. Vll 

IX. — The author's mistake — He has tried to solve, 
not the question of life, but the question of his 
own life — In faith alone is the possibility of life 
— Without faith, life is impossible — In the solu- 
tions offered by faith there is profound human 
wisdom 78 

X. — The author studies religions — He mingles with 

believers and theologians — The author is alarmed 
and again in despair — The lives of these men do 
not correspond with their professions — The faith 
of these people is not the faith for which the 
author seeks — He mingles with the common peo- 
ple, with fanatics and sectarians — He finds a true 
faith — He believes that he has grasped the mean- 
ing of life 88 

XI. — Everything clear — The insanity of the race — 
"What has the author done for thirty years ? — 
To understand the will of the Regulator of the 
universe one must carry out that will — The wise 

and the simple . 96 

XII. — The life of a parasite and the true life — Seek- 
ing after God — If God, Cause of all causes, ex- 
ists, life is possible — The problem unsolved — 
The bird falls from the nest — And yet lives — 
Aspirations of life — Despair — Man adrift and 
God the shore . 102 

XIII. — The life of the world a travesty of life — To 
understand life we must apply to those who pro- 
duce life and give it a meaning— The author 
accepts all rites inspired by faith — Reasons for 
this — The arguments of theologians — Reserva- 
tions in the author's faith 112 



Viii CONTENTS. 

XIV. — Ritual not understood — The author adheres 
to ceremonial — Religious ideas of the people — 
Reading the lives of saints and martyrs .... 120 

XV. — The author envies the simple beliefs of the 
people — Orthodoxy — New problems — The Or- 
thodox Church and other churches — Men of dif- 
ferent faiths treat one another as heretics — The 
author tries to conciliate different Christian com- 
munities — Reply of a Russian priest — The author 
renounces Orthodoxy — The Orthodox Church and 
its indorsement of war 126 

XVI. — There are falsehoods in faith — The author 
searches the Scriptures — The fruits of his studies 
to form a book: My Beligion 135 

Conclusion „. • 138 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 
Preface 145 

Introduction 165 

I.— The Son of God 167 

Man, the Son of God, powerless in the flesh, is 
free in the spirit. (Our Father.) 

II 170 

And therefore man must work, not for the 
flesh, but according to the spirit. ( Which art in 
heaven.) 



CONTENTS. IX 

III H3 

From the spirit of the Father hath proceeded 
the life of all men. (Hallowed be thy name.) 

IV. — The Kingdom of God 176 

And, therefore, the will of the Father is that all 
men should have life and happiness. (Thy king- 
dom come. ) 

V. — The True Life 180 

The fulfilment of the will of the Father gives a 
true life. ( Thy will be done. ) 

VI. — A False Life 186 

And therefore, in order to attain to a true life, 
a man on earth must abstain from the false life 
of the flesh, and live in the spirit. ( On earth as 
in heaven.) 

VII. — I and the Father are One 195 

The true food of life is fulfilment of the will of 
the Father, and union with Him. ( Give us this 
day our daily bread.) 

VIII. — Life not in Time 203 

Therefore a man really lives when he thinks 
only of fulfilling the will of the Father in tho 
present, and leaves all thought of the past and of 
the future. (Give us now our daily bread, and 
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that 
trespass against us. ) 

IX. — Temptations 209 

The delusions of the individual and temporal 
life hide from men the true life, which alone is 
real, in union with the Father. (Lead us not into 
temptation.) 



X CONTENTS. 

X. — The Struggle against Temptation . . . 218 
Therefore to get rid of evil, we must, every 
hour of our life, be in unity with the Father. 
(Lead us not into temptation.) 

XL — The Farewell Discourse 227 

Personal life is a deception of the flesh, an evil. 
True life is the life which is common to all men. 
(But deliver us from the evil one.) 

XII. — The Victory of the Spirit over the 

Flesh 233 

Therefore, for the man who lives not a personal 
life, but in the common life which is through the 
will of the Father, there is no evil. The death of 
the body is union with the Father. ( Thine be the 
kingdom, the power, and the glory.) 

The Conclusion. To understand Life is to 
do Good 241 

The good tidings of Jesus Christ is the revela- 
tion of the understanding of life. 



MY CONFESSION. 



MY CONFESSION. 



i. 

I WAS christened and educated in the faith of 
the Orthodox Greek Church ; I was taught it 
in my childhood, and I learned it in my youth. 
Nevertheless, at eighteen years of age, when I 
quitted the university, I had discarded all 
belief in anything that I had been taught. 
To judge by what I can now remember, I 
could never have had a very serious belief ; it 
must have been a kind of trust in this teach- 
ing, based on one in my teachers and elders, 
and, moreover, a trust not very firmly 
grounded. 

I remember once in my twelfth year, a boy, 

now long since dead, Vladimir M , a pupil 

in a gymnasium, spent a Sunday with us, and 
brought us the news of the last discovery in the 
gymnasium, namely, that there was no God, 

1 



2 MY CONFESSION. 

and that all we were taught on the subject was 
a mere invention (this was in 1838). I remem- 
ber well how interested my elder brothers were 
in this news ; I was admitted to their delibera- 
tions, and w r e all eagerly accepted the theory 
as something particularly attractive and possi- 
bly quite true. I remember, also, that when 
my elder brother, Demetry, then at the univer- 
sity, with the impulsiveness natural to his 
character, gave himself up to a passionate faith, 
began to attend the church services regularly, 
to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life, we all 
of us, and some older than ourselves, never 
ceased to hold him up to ridicule, and for some 
incomprehensible reason gave him the nick- 
name of Noah. I remember that Moussin- 
Poushkin, the then curator of the University 
of Kazan, having invited us to a ball, tried to 
persuade my brother, who had refused the 
invitation, by the jeering argument that even 
David danced before the Ark. 

I sympathized then with these jokes of my 
elders, and drew from them this conclusion, 
that I was bound to learn my catechism, and 
go to church, but that it was not necessary to 



MY CONFESSION. 6 

think of my religious duties more seriously. 
I also remember that I read (yoltaire^when I 
was very young, and that his tone of mockery 
amused without disgusting me. The gradual 
estrangement from all belief went on in me, as 
it does, and always has done, in those of the 
same social position and culture. This falling 
off, as it seems to me, for the most part goes on 
as follows : — £people live as others live,N and 
their lives are guided, not by the principles of 
the faith which is taught them, but by their 
very opposite ; (belief has no influence on life,A 
nor on the relations between men — it is rele- 
gated to some other sphere where life is not ; 
if the two ever come into contact at all, belief 
is only one of the outward phenomena, and not 
one of the constituent parts of lifeT) 

By a man's life, by his acts, it was then, as it 
is now, impossible to know whether he was a 
believer or not. If there be a difference be- 
tween one who openly professes the doctrines 
of the Orthodox Church, and one who denies 
them, the difference is to the advantage of the 
former. The open profession of the Orthodox 
doctrines is mostly found among persons of 



4 MY CONFESSION. 

dull intellects, of stern character, and who 
think much of their own importance.) Intel- 
ligence, honesty, frankness, a good heart, and 
moral conduct are oftener met with among 
those who are disbelievers/; The school-boy is 
taught his catechism and sent to church; from 
the grown man is required a certificate of his 
having taken the holy communion. A man, 
however, belonging to our class, neither goes 
to school nor is bound by the regulations affect- 
ing those in the public service, and may now 
live through long years — still more was this 
the case formerly — without being once re- 
minded of the fact that he lives among Chris- 
tians, and calls himself a member of the 
Orthodox Church. 

Thus it happens that now, as formerly, the 
influence of early religious teaching, accepted 
merely on trust and upheld by authority, grad- 
ually fades away under the knowledge and 
practical experience of later life, which is 
opposed to all its principles, and that a man 
often believes for years that his early faith is 
still intact, while all the time not a particle of 
it remains in him. 



MY CONFESSION. 5 

A certain S , a clever and veracious 

man, once related to me how he came to cease 
to believe. 

Twenty-six years ago, being on a hunting 
party, before he lay down to rest, according to 
a habit of his from childhood, he knelt down 
to pray. His elder brother, who was of the 
party, lay on some straw and watched him. 

When S had finished, and was preparing 

to lie down, his brother said to him, " Ah, you 
still keep that up?" Nothing more passed 

between them, but from that day S ceased 

to pray and to go to church. For thirty years 

S has not said a prayer, has not taken the 

communion, has not been in a church, not 
because he shared the convictions of his 
brother, or even knew them, not because he 
had come to any conclusions of his own, but 
because his brother's words were like the push 
of a finger against a wall ready to tumble over 
with its own weight ; they proved to him that 
what he had taken for belief was an empty 
form, and that consequently every word he 
uttered, every sign of the cross he made, every 
time he bowed his head during his prayers, his 



b MY CONFESSION. 

act was an unmeaning one. When he once 
admitted to himself that such acts had no 
meaning in them, he could not but discontinue 
them. Thus it has been, and is, I believe, with 
the large majority of men. 

I speak of men of our class, of men who are 
true to themselves, and not of those who make 
of religion a means of obtaining some temporal 
advantage. (These men are truly absolute un- 
believers, for if faith be to them a means of 
obtaining any worldly end, it is most certainly 
no faith at all.) Such men of our own class are 
in the following position: the knowledge and 
experience of active life has shattered the arti- 
ficially constructed building of belief within, 
and they have either observed that and cleared 
away the superincumbent ruins, or they have 
remained unconscious of the destruction 
worked. 

The belief instilled from childhood, in me, as 
in so many others, gradually disappeared, but 
with this difference, that as from fifteen years 
of age I had begun to read philosophical works, 
I was conscious of my own disbelief. From 
the age of sixteen I ceased to pray, and ceased, 



MY CONFESSION. 7 

from conviction, to attend the services of the 
church and to fast. I no longer accepted the 
faith of my childhood, but I had a vague belief 
in something, though I do not think I could 
exactly explain in what. I believed in a God, 
or rather, I did not deny the existence of God, 
but anything relating to the nature of that 
godhead I could not have described ; I denied 
neither Christ nor his teaching, but in what 
that teaching consisted I could not have said. 

Now, when I think over that time, I see 
clearly that all the faith I had, the only belief 
which, apart from mere animal instinct, swayed 
my life, was a belief in a possibility of perfec- 
tion, though what it was in itself, or what 
would be its results, I was unable to say. I 
endeavored to reach perfection in intellect- 
ual attainments: my studies were extended 
in every direction of which my life afforded me 
a chance ; I strove to strengthen my will, 
forming for myself rules which I forced myself 
to follow ; I did my best to develop my physi- 
cal powers by every exercise calculated to give 
strength and agility, and by way of accustom- 
ing myself to patient endurance I subjected 



8 MY CONFESSION. 

myself to many voluntary hardships and trials 
of privation. All this I looked upon as neces- 
sary to obtain the perfection at which I aimed. 
At first, of course, moral perfection seemed to 
me the main end, but I soon found myself con- 
templating in its stead an ideal of general per- 
fectibility ; in other words, I wished to be 
better, not in my own eyes nor in those of 
God, but in the sight of other men. This 
feeling again soon ended in another, the desire 
to have more power than others, to secure for 
myself a greater share of fame, of social 
distinction, and of wealth. 



II. 



At some future time I may relate the story 
of my life, and dwell in detail on the pathetic 
and instructive incidents of my youth. Many 
others must have passed through the same as I 
did. I honestly desired to make myself a good 
and virtuous man ; but I was young, I had 
passions, and I stood alone, altogether alone, 
in my search after virtue. Every time I tried 
to express the longings of my heart for a truly 
virtuous life, I was met with contempt and 
derisive laughter, ^but directly I gave way to 
the lowest of my passions, I was praised and 
encouraged.) I found ambition, love of power, 
love of gain, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance, 
held in high esteem". I gave way to these 
passions, and becoming like unto my elders, I 
felt that the place which I filled in the world 
satisfied those around me. My kind-hearted 
aunt, a really good woman, used to say to me, 
that there was one thing above all others which 



10 MY CONFESSION. 

she wished for me — an intrigue with a married 
woman : " Rien ne forme un jeune homme, 
comme une liaison avec une femme corame il 
faut." Another of her wishes for my happi- 
ness was that I should become an adjutant, 
and, if possible, to the Emperor ; the greatest 
happiness of all for me she thought would be 
that I should find a wealthy bride, who would 
bring me as her dowry an enormous number of 
slaves. 

I cannot now recall those years without a 
painful feeling of horror and loathing. 

V I put men to death in war, I fought duels to 
slay others, I lost at cards, wasted my sub- 
stance wrung from the sweat of peasants, 
punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose 
women, and deceived merit) Lying, robbery, 
adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, 
and murder, all committed by me, not one 
crime omitted, and yet I was not the less 
considered by my equals a comparatively moral 
mari>. Such was my life during ten years. 

During that time I began to write, out of 
vanity, love of gain, and pride. I followed as 
a writer the same path which I had chosen as 



MY CONFESSION. 11 

a man. (in order to obtain the fame and the 
money for which I wrote, I was obliged to 
hide what was good and bow down before 
what was evil!) How often while writing 
have I cudgelled my brains to conceal under 
the mask of indifference or pleasantry those 
yearnings for something better which formed 
the real problem of my life ! I succeeded in 
my object, and was praised. At twenty-six 
years of age, on the close of the war, I came 
to St. Petersburg and made the acquaintance 
of the authors of the day. 

I met with a hearty reception and much 
flattery. 

Before I had time to look around, the preju- 
dices and views of life common to the writers 
of the class with which I associated became my 
own, and completely put an end to all my 
former struggles after a better life. These 
views, under the influence of the dissipation 
into which I plunged, issued in a theory of 
life which justified it. The view of life taken 
by these my fellow-writers was that life is a 
development, and the principal part in that 
development is played by ourselves, the 



12 MY CONFESSION. 

thinkers, while among the thinkers the chief 
influence is again due to ourselves, the poets. 
Our vocation is to teach mankind. 

In order to avoid answering the very natural 
question, "What do I know, and what can I 
teach ? " the theory in question is made to 
contain the formula that such is not required 
to be known, but that the thinker and the 
poet teach unconsciously. I was myself con- 
sidered a marvellous litterateur and poet, and 
I therefore very naturally adopted this theory. 
Meanwhile, thinker and poet though I was, I 
wrote and taught I knew not what. For doing 
this I received large sums of money ; I kept a 
splendid table, had an excellent lodging, asso- 
ciated with loose women, and received my 
friends handsomely ; moreover, I had fame. 
It would seem, then, that what I taught must 
have been good; the faith in poetry and the 
development of life was a true faith, and I was 
one of its high priests, a post of great impor- 
tance, and of profit. I long remained in this 
belief, and never once doubted its truth. 

In the second, however, and especially in 
the third year of this way of life, I began to 



M Y CONFESSION. 13 

doubt the infallibility of the doctrine, and to 
examine it more closely. (The first doubtful 
fact which attracted my attention was that 
the apostles of this belief did not agree among 
themselves. Some proclaimed that they alone 
were good and useful teachers, and all others 
worthless ; while those opposed to them said 
the same of themselves. They disputed, quar- 
relled, abused, deceived, and cheated one 
another.} 

.Moreover, there were many among us who, 
quite indifferent to right or wrong, only cared 
for their own private interests. All this forced 
on me doubts as to the truth of our belief. 
Again, when I doubted this faith in the influ- 
ence of literary men, I began to examine more 
closely into the character and conduct of its 
chief professors, and I convinced myself that 
these writers were men who led immoral lives, 
most of them worthless and insignificant indi- 
viduals, and far beneath the moral level of 
those with whom I had associated during my 
former dissipated and military career; these 
men, however, had none the less an amount of 
self-confidence only to be expected in those who 



14 MY CONFESSION. 

are conscious of being saints, or in those for 
whom holiness is an empty name^ 

I grew disgusted with mankind and with my- 
self, and I understood that this belief which I 
had accepted was a delusion. The strangest 
thing in all this was that, though I soon saw 
the falseness of this belief and renounced it, I 
did not renounce the position I had gained by 
it ; I still called myself a thinker, a poet, and a 
teacher. (I was simple enough to imagine that 
I, the poet and thinker, was able to teach other 
men without knowing myself what it was that I 
attempted to teach; I had only gained a new 
vice by my companionship with these men ; it 
had developed pride in me to a morbid extreme, 
and my self-confidence in teaching what I did 
not know amounted almost to insanity. When 
I now think over that time, and remember my 
own state of mind and that of these men (a 
state of mind common enough among thousands 
still), it seems to me pitiful, terrible, and ridic- 
ulous ; it excites the feelings which overcome us 
as we pass through a madhouse. We were all 
then convinced that it behooved us to speak, to 
write, and to print as fast as we could, as much 



MY CONFESSION. 15 

as we could, and that on this depended the wel- 
fare of the human race. Hundreds of us wrote, 
printed, and taught, and all the while confuted 
and abused each other. Quite unconscious that 
we ourselves knew nothing, that to the simplest 
of all problems in life — (what is right, and what 
is wrong V- we had no answer, we all went on 
talking together without one to listen, at times 
abetting and praising one another on condition 
that we were abetted and praised in turn, and 
again turning upon each other in wrath — in 
short, we reproduced the scenes in a madhouse. 
Hundreds of exhausted laborers worked day 
and night, putting up the type and printing 
millions of pages to be spread by the post all 
over Russia, and still we continued to teach, 
unable to teach enough, angrily complaining 
the while that we were not listened to. A 
strange state of things indeed, but now it is 
clear enough. The real motive that inspired 
all our reasoning was the desire for money and 
; praise7 to obtain which we knew of no other 
means than writing books and newspapers. In 
order, however, while thus uselessly employed, 
to hold fast to the conviction that we were 



16 MY CONFESSION. 

really of importance to society, it was neces- 
sary to justify our occupation to ourselves by 
another theory, and the following was the one 
we adopted : (Whatever is, is right ; everything 
that is, is due to development, and the latter 
again to civilization ; the measure of civilization 
is the figure to which the publication of books 
and newspapers reaches ; we are paid and 
honored for the books and newspapers which 
we write, and we are therefore the most useful 
and best of all citizens^) 

This reasoning might have been conclusive, 
had we all been agreed ; but, as for every 
opinion expressed by one of us there instantly 
appeared from another, one diametrically op- 
posite, we had to hesitate before accepting it. 
But this we passed over ; we received money, 
and were praised by those who agreed with us, 
consequently we were in the right. \It is now 
clear to me that between ourselves and the in- 
habitants of a madhouse there was no differ- 
ence : at the time I only vaguely suspected 
this, and, like all madmen, thought all were 
mad except myself. 



III. 



I lived in this senseless manner another six 
years, up to the time of my marriage. During 
the interval I had been abroad. My life in 
Europe, and my acquaintance with many emi- 
nent and learned foreigners, confirmed my 
belief in the doctrine of general perfectibility, 
as I found the same theory prevailed among 
them. This belief took the form which is com- 
mon among most cultivated men of the day. 
It may be summed up in the word " prog- 
ress." It then appeared to me this word 
had a real meaning. I did not under- 
stand that, tormented like other men by the 
question, "(How was I to better my life^? " when 
I answered that I must live for progress, I was 
only repeating the answer of a man carried 
away in a boat by the waves and the vfojh w h° 
to the one important question for him, " Wliere 
are we to steer?" should ansv> 3r, saying, "We 
are being carried somewhere.' 

This I then did not see ; it was only at rare 
17 



18 MY CONFESSION. 

intervals that my feelings, and not my reason, 
were roused against the common superstition of 
our age,(which leads men to ignore their own 
ignorance of life^ 

Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of a 
public execution revealed to me the weakness 
of my superstitious belief in progress. (When I 
saw the head divided from the body, and heard 
the sound with which they fell separately into 
the box, I understood, not with my reason, but 
with my whole being, that no theory of the 
wisdom of all established things, nor of prog- 
ress, could justify such an act ; and that if all 
the men in the world from the day of creation, 
by whatever theory, had found this thing neces- 
sary, it was not so ; it was a bad thing, and that 
therefore I must judge of what was right and 
necessary, not by what men said and did, not 
by progress, but what I felt to be true in my 
hearts 

Another instance of the insufficiency of this 
superstition of progress as a rule for life was 
the death of my brother. He fell ill while still 
young, suffered much during a whole year, and 
died in great pain. He was a man of good 



MY CONFESSION-. 19 

abilities, of a kind heart, and of a serious 
temper,(jput he died without understanding why- 
he had lived, or what his death meant for him. 
No theories could give an answer to these 
questions, either to him or to me, during the 
whole period of his long and painful lingering. 
Then occasions for doubt, however, were few 
and far between ; on the whole, I continued to 
live in the profession of the faith of progress. 
''Everything develops, and I myself develop 
as well ; and why this is so will one day be ap- 
parent," was the formula I was obliged to 
adopt. 

On my return from abroad I settled in the 
country, and occupied myself with the organ- 
ization of schools for the peasantry. This 
occupation was especially grateful to me, be- 
cause it was free from the spirit of falseness 
so evident to me in the career of a literary 
teacher. 

Here again I acted in the name of progress, 
but this time I brought a spirit of critical in- 
quiry to the system on which the progress 
rested. I said to myself that progress was 
often attempted in an irrational manner, and 



20 MY CONFESSION. 

that it was necessary to leave a primitive 
people and the children of peasants perfectly 
free to choose the way of progress which they 
thought best. In reality I was still bent on 
the solution of the same impossible problem, 
how to teach without knowing what I had to 
teach. In the highest sphere of literature I 
had understood that it was impossible to do 
this because I had seen that each taught dif- 
ferently, and that the teachers quarrelled 
among themselves, and scarcely succeeded in 
concealing their ignorance. Having now to 
deal with peasants' children, I thought that I 
could get over this difficulty by allowing the 
children to learn what they liked. It seems 
now absurd when I remember the expedients 
by which I carried out this whim of mine to 
teach, though I knew in my heart that I could 
teach nothing useful, because I myself did not 
know what was necessary. 

After a year spent in this employment with 
the schools, I again went abroad, for the pur- 
pose of finding out how I was to teach under 
these conditions. 

I believed that I had found a solution abroad, 



MY CONFESSION. 21 

and, armed with that conviction, I returned to 
Russia, the same year in which the peasants 
were freed from serfdom ; and, accepting the 
office of a country magistrate or arbitrator, I 
began to teach the uneducated people in the 
schools, and the educated classes in the jour- 
nals which I published. Things seemed to be 
going on well, but I felt that my mind was not 
in a normal state and that a change was near. 
I might then, perhaps, have come to that state 
of absolute despair to which I was brought 
fifteen years later, if it had not been for a new 
experience in life which promised me safety — 
the home life of a family man. For a year I 
occupied myself with my duties as arbitrator, 
with the schools, and my newspaper, and got 
so involved that I was harassed to death ; my 
arbitration was. one continual struggle, what to 
do in the schools became less and less clear, 
and my newspaper shuffling more and more 
repugnant to me, always the same thing — try- 
ing to teach without knowing how or what — 
so that I fell ill, more with a mental than phy- 
sical sickness, gave up everything, and started 
for the steppes to breathe a fresher air, to 



22 MY CONFESSION. 

drink mare's milk, and live a mere animal 
life. 

Soon after my return I married. The new 
circumstances of a happy family life by which 
I was now surrounded completely led my mind 
away from the search after the meaning of life 
as a whole. My life was concentrated in my 
family, my wife, and children, and consequent- 
ly in the care for increasing the means of sup- 
porting them. The effort to effect my own 
individual perfection, already replaced by the 
striving after general progress, was again 
changed into an effort to secure the particular 
happiness of my family. In this way fifteen 
years passed. Notwithstanding that during 
these fifteen years I looked upon the craft of 
authorship as a very trifling thing, I continued 
all the time to write. I had experienced the 
seductions of authorship, the temptations of an 
enormous pecuniary reward and of great ap- 
plause for valueless work, and gave myself up 
to it as a means of improving my material 
position, and of stifling all the feelings which 
led me to question my own life and that of 
society for the meaning in them. In my 



MY CONFESSION. 28 

writings I taught what for me was the only 
truth, that the object of life should be our own 
happiness and that of our family. 

By this rule I lived ; but five years ago, a 
strange state of mind-torpor began at times to 
grow upon me. I had moments of perplexity, 
of a stoppage, as it were, of life, as if I did not 
know how I was to live, what I was to do. I 
began to wander, and was a victim to low 
spirits. This, however, passed, and I continued 
to live as before. Later, these periods of per- 
plexity grew more and more frequent, and in- 
variably took the same form. During their con- 
tinuance the same questions always presented 
themselves to me : "Why ? " and "What after ? " 

At first it seemed to me that these were 
empty and unmeaning questions, that all they 
asked about was well known, and that when- 
ever I wished to find answers to them I could 
do so without much trouble — then I had no 
time for it. But these questions presented 
themselves to my mind with ever-increasing fre- 
quency, demanding an answer with still great- 
er and greater persistence, grouping themselves 
into one dark and ominous spot. It was with me 



24 MY CONFESSION. 

as in every case of a hidden, mortal disease — 
at first the symptoms, as to its position, are 
slight, and. are disregarded by the patient, 
while later they are repeated more and more 
frequently, till they end in a period of uninter- 
rupted suffering. (The sufferings increase, and 
the patient, before he has time to seek a 
remedy, is confronted with the fact that what 
he took for a mere indisposition has become 
more important to him than anything else on 
earth, that he is face to face with deatli^ 

\This is exactly what happened mentally to 
myself.]} I became aware that this was not a 
mere passing phase of mental ill-health, that the 
symptoms were of the utmost importance, and 
that if these questions continued to recur, I 
must find an answer to them. I tried to an- 
swer them. The questions seemed so foolish, 
so simple, so childish; but no sooner had I 
begun my attempt to decide them than I 
was convinced that they were neither childish 
nor silly, but were concerned with the deepest 
problems of life, and again that I was, think of 
them as I would, utterly unable to find an 
answer to them. 



MY CONFESSION. 25 

Before occupying myself with my estate, 
with the education of my son, with the writing 
of books, I was bound to know why I did these 
things. vTill I know the reasons for my own 
acts, I can do nothing, I cannot live> While 
thinking of the details of the management of 
my household and estate, which in these days 
occupied much of my time, the following ques- 
tion came into my head : " Well, I have now 
six thousand ' desatins ' in the government of 
Samara, and three hundred horses — what 
then ? " I was quite disconcerted, and knew 
not what to think. Another time, dwelling on 
the thought of how I should educate my chil- 
dren, I asked myself, "Why?" Again, when 
considering by what means the well-being of 
the people might best be promoted, I suddenly 
exclaimed, " But what concern have I with it ? " 
When I thought of the fame which my works 
had gained me, I used to say to myself, "(Well, 
what if I should be more famous than Gogol, 
Poushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere — than all the 
writers of the world — well, and what then ?J" I 
could find no reply. Such questions demand an 
answer, and an immediate one ; without one it 
is impossible to live, but answer there was none. 



IV. 

My life had come to a sudden stop. I was 
able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I 
could not, indeed, help doing so ; but there was 
no real life in me. I had not a single wish to 
strive for the fulfilment of what I could feel to 
be reasonable. If I wished for anything, I 
knew beforehand that, were I to satisfy the 
wish, nothing would come of it, I should still 
be dissatisfied. Had .a fairy appeared and 
offered me all I desired, I should not have 
known what to say. If I seemed to have, at a 
given moment of excitement, not a wish, but a 
mood resulting from the tendencies of former 
wishes, at a calmer moment I knew that it was 
a delusion, that I really wished for nothing. I 
could not even wish to know the truth, because 
I guessed what the truth was. 

\The truth lay in this, that life had no mean- 
ing for me.* Every day of life, every step in it, 
brought me nearer the edge of a precipice, 

26 



MY CONFESSION. 27 

whence I saw clearly the final ruin before me. 
To stop, to go back, were alike impossible ; nor 
could I shut my eyes so as not to see the suffer- 
ing that alone awaited me, the death of all in 
me, even to annihilation. Thus I, a healthy 
and a happy man, was brought to feel that I 
could live no longer, that an irresistible force 
was dragging me down into the grave.) I do 
not mean that I had an intention of committing 
suicide. The force that drew me away from 
life was stronger, fuller, and concerned with far 
wider consequences than any mere wish ; it was 
a force like that of my previous attachment to 
life, only in a contrary direction. \The idea of 
suicide came as naturally to me as formerly that 
of bettering my life. It had so much attrac- 
tion for me that I was compelled to practise a 
species of self-deception, in order to avoid 
carrying it out too hastily. I was unwilling to 
act hastily, only because I had determined first 
to clear away the confusion of my thoughts, 
and, that once done, I could always kill myself. 
I was happy, yet I hid away a cord, to avoid 
being tempted to hang myself by it to one of 
the pegs between the cupboards of my study, 



28 MY CONFESSION. 

where I undressed alone every evening, and 
ceased carrying a gun because it offered too 
easy a way of getting rid of life. I knew not 
what I wanted ; I was afraid of life ; I shrank 
from it, and yet there was something I hoped 
for from it. 

Such was the condition I had come to, at a 
time when all the circumstances of my life were 
pre-eminently happy ones, and when I had not 
reached my fiftieth year. I had a good, a lov- 
ing, and a well-beloved wife, good children, a 
fine estate, which, without much trouble on my 
part, continually increased my income; I was 
more than ever respected by my friends and ac- 
quaintances; I was praised by strangers, and 
could lay claim to having made my name 
famous without much self-deception* More- 
over, my mind was neither deranged nor weak- 
ened ; on the contrary, I enjoyed a mental and 
physical strength which I have seldom found in 
men of my class and pursuits : I could keep up 
with a peasant in mowing, and could continue 
mental labor for ten hours at a stretch, without 
any evil consequences. 

The mental state in which I then was seemed 



MY CONFESSION. 29 

to me summed up in the following : my life 
was a foolish and wicked joke played upon me 
by I knew not whom. Notwithstanding my 
rejection of the idea of a Creator, that of a be- 
ing who thus wickedly and foolishly made a joke 
of me seemed to me the most natural of all 
conclusions, and the one that threw the most 
light upon my darkness. I instinctively rea- 
soned that this being, wherever he might be, 
was one who was even then diverting himself 
at my expense, as he watched me, after from 
thirty to forty years of a life of study and 
development, of mental and bodily growth, 
with all my powers matured and having reached 
the point at which life as a whole should be 
best understood, standing like a fool with but 
one thing clear to me, that there was nothing 
in life, that there never was anything, and 
never will be. "To him I must seem ridic- 
ulous. . . . But was there, or was there not, 
such a being?" Neither way could I feel 
it helped me. I could not attribute reasonable 
motive to any single act, much less to my 
whole life. I was only astonished that this 
had not occurred to me before, from premises 



30 MY CONFESSION. 

which had so long been known. Illness and 
death would come (indeed they had come), if 
not to-day, then to-morrow, to those whom I 
loved, to myself, and nothing would remain but 
stench and worms. All my acts, whatever I 
did, would sooner or later be forgotten, and I 
myself be nowhere. Why, then, busy one's 
self with anything ? How could men see this, 
and live ? It is possible to live only as long as 
life intoxicates us ; as soon as we are sober 
again we see that it is all a delusion, and a 
stupid one ! In this, indeed, there is nothing 
either ludicrous or amusing; it is only cruel 
and absurd. 

There is an old Eastern fable about a trav- 
eller in the steppes who is attacked by a furi- 
ous wild beast. To save himself the traveller 
gets into a dried-up well ; but at the bottom of 
it, he sees a dragon with its jaws wide-open to 
devour him. The unhappy man dares not get 
out for fear of the wild beast, and dares not 
descend for fear of the dragon, so he catches 
hold of the branch of a wild plant growing in 
a crevice of the well. His arms grow tired, 
and he feels that he must soon perish, death 



MY CONFESSION. 31 

awaiting him on either side, but he still holds 
on ; and then he sees two mice, one black and 
one white, gnawing through the trunk of the 
wild plant, as they gradually and evenly make 
their way round it. The plant must soon give 
way, break off, and he will fall into the jaws of 
the dragon. The traveller sees this, and knows 
that he must inevitably perish ; but, while still 
hanging, he looks around him, and, finding 
some drops of honey on the leaves of the wild 
plant, he stretches out his tongue and licks 
them. 

Thus do I cling to the branch of life, know- 
ing that the dragon of death inevitably awaits 
me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot 
understand why such tortures have fallen to 
my lot. I also strive to suck the honey which 
once comforted me, but it palls on my palate, 
while the white mouse and the black, day and 
night, gnaw through the branch to which I 
cling. I see the dragon too plainly, and the 
honey is no longer sweet. I see the dragon, 
from whom there is no escape, and the mice, 
and I cannot turn my eyes away from them. 
It is no fable, but a living, undeniable truth, to 



32 MY CONFESSION. 

be understood of all men. The former delu- 
sion of happiness in life which hid from me 
the horror of the dragon, no longer deceives me. 
However I may reason with myself that I 
cannot understand the meaning of life, that I 
must live without(thinkingJ I cannot again begin 
to do so, because I have done so too long already. 
I cannot now help seeing that each day and 
each night, as it passes, brings me nearer to 
death. I can see but this, because this alone is 
true — all the rest is a lie.* The two drops of 
honey, which more than anything else drew me 
away from the cruel truth, my love for my 
family and for my writings, to which latter I 
gave the name of art, no longer taste sweet to 
me. " My family," thought I; "but a family, 
a wife and children, are also human beings, 
and subject to the same conditions as myself; 
they must either be living in a lie, or they 
must see the terrible truth. (Why should 
they live? Why should I love, care for, 
bring up, and watch over them? To bring 
them to the despair which fills myself, or to 
make dolts of them ? As I love them, I can- 
not conceal from them the truth ) — every step 



MY CONFESSION. 33 

they take in knowledge leads them to it, and 
that truth is death.*? 

But art, then; but poetry? Under the influ- 
ence of success and flattered by praise, I had 
long persuaded myself that these were things 
worth working for, notwithstanding the ap- 
proach of death, the great destroyer, to anni- 
hilate my writings, and the memory of them ; 
but now I soon saw that this was only another 
delusion, I saw clearly that art is only the 
ornament and charm of life. Life having lost 
its charm for me, how could I make others see 
a charm in it? While I was not living my 
own life, but one that was external to me, as 
long as I believed that life had a meaning, 
though I could not say what it was, life was 
reflected for me in the poetry and art which I 
loved, it was pleasant to me to look into the 
mirror of art ; but when I tried- to discover the 
meaning of life, when I felt the necessity of 
living myself, the mirror became either unnec- 
essary or painful. I could no longer take com- 
fort from what I saw in the mirror — that my 
position was a stupid and desperate one. 
lit warmed my heart when I believed that 



34 MY CONFESSION. 

life had a meaning^ when the play of the light 
on the glass showed me all that was comic, 
tragic, touching, beautiful, and terrible in life, 
and comforted me!) but when I knew that life 
had no meaning at all, and was only terrible, 
the play of the light no longer amused mew 
No honey could be sweet upon my tongue 
when I saw the dragon, and the mice eating 
away the stay which supported me. Nor was 
that all. Had I simply come to know that life 
has no meaning, I might have quietly accepted 
it as my allotted portion. I could not, how- 
ever, remain thus unmoved. Had I been like 
a man in a wood, out of which he knows that 
there is no issue, I could have lived on ; but I 
was like a man lost in a wood, and who, terri- 
fied by the thought, rushes about trying to find 
a way out, and, though he knows each step can 
only lead him farther astray, cannot help run- 
ning backwards and forwards^ 

It was this that was terrible, this which to 
get free from I was ready to kill myself. I felt 
a horror of what awaited me ; I knew that this 
horror was more terrible than the position 
itself, but I could not patiently await the end. 



MY CONFESSION. 35 

However persuasive the argument might be 
that all the same something in the heart or 
elsewhere would burst and all be over, still I 
could not patiently await the end. The horror 
of the darkness was too great to bear, and I 
longed to free myself from it by a rope or a 
pistol ball. (This was the feeling that, above 
all, drew me to think of suicide. 



V. 

It was possible, however, that I had over- 
looked something, that I had failed to under- 
stand something, and I often asked myself, if 
such a state of utter despair could be, (what 
/ man was born to. I sought an explanation of 
the questions which tormented me in every 
branch of human knowledge ; I sought that 
explanation painfully and long, not out of mere 
curiosity nor apathetically, but obstinately day 
and night f> I sought it as a perishing man 
seeks safety, and I found nothing.^ My search 
not only failed, but I convinced myself that all 
those who had searched like myself had failed 
also, and come like me to the despairing con- 
viction that the only absolute knowledge man 
can possess is this — that life is without a 
meaning. I sought in all directions, and, 
thanks to a life of study, and also to the foot- 
ing which I had gained in learned society, all 
the sources of knowledge were open to me, not 

36 



MY CONFESSION. 37 

merely through books, but through personal 
intercourse. I had the advantage of all that 
learning could answer to the question, "What 
is life?" 

^It was long before I could believe that 
human learning had no clear answer whatever 
to this question.^ It seemed to me, when I con- 
sidered the importance which science attributed 
to so many theories unconnected w T ith the 
problem of life, and the serious tone which 
pervaded her inquiries into them, that I must 
have misunderstood something. For a long 
time I was too timid to oppose the learning of 
the day, and I fancied that the insufficiency of 
the answers which I received was not its fault, 
but was owing to my own gross ignorance ; but 
this thing was not a joke to pass the time with 
me, but the business of my life, and I was at 
last forced to the conclusion that these ques- 
tions were just and necessary ones underlying 
all knowledge, and that it was not I that was 
in fault in putting them, but^sciencejin pretend- 
ing to have an answer to them. 

The question, which in my fiftieth year had 
brought me very close to suicide, was the sim- 



38 MY CONFESSION. 

plest of all questions, one to make itself heard 
in the heart of every man from undeveloped 
childhood to wisest old age ; a question without 
which, as I had myself experienced, life became 
impossible. 

That question was as follows : "\jVhat result 
will there be from what I am doing now, and 
may do to-morrow? what will be the issue of 
my life??" Otherwise expressed, it may run: 
4 \Why should I live ? why should I wish for 
anything? why should I do anything?" 
Again, in other words it is : "(Is there any 
meaning in my life which can overcome the 
inevitable death awaiting me ?]" 

To this question, one and the same though 
variously expressed, I sought an answer in 
human knowledge, and I found that with 
respect to this question all human knowledge 
may be divided into two opposite hemispheres, 
with their respective poles, the one negative, 
the other affirmative,(^but that at neither end is 
to be found an answer to the problem of life?j 
One system of knowledge seems to deny that 
there is such a question, but, on the other 
hand, has a clear and exact answer to all its 



MY CONFESSION. 39 

own independent inquiries : it is the system of 
experimental science, at the extreme end of 
which is mathematics. Another system ac- 
cepts the question, but does not answer it ; it 
is that of theoretic philosophy, and at its ex- 
tremity is metaphysics. I had been addicted 
from my youth to theoretical study; later, 
mathematics and the exact sciences had at- 
tracted me ; and till I came to put clearly to 
myself this question as to the meaning of life, 
until it grew up in me, as it were, of itself, and 
till I felt that it demanded an immediate an- 
swer, I was content with the artificial and con- 
ventional answers given by learning. 

For the practical side of life I used to say to 
myself, "All is development and differentia- 
tion, all tends to complication and perfection, 
and there are laws which govern this process. 
You are yourself a part of the whole. Learn 
as much as possible of this whole, and learn the 
law of its development; you will then know 
your own place in the great unity, and know 
yourself as well." Though I feel shame in 
confessing it, I must needs own that there was 
a time when I was myself developing — when 



40 MY CONFESSION. 

my muscles and memory were strengthening, 
my power of thinking and understanding on 
the increase — that I, feeling this, very natu- 
rally thought that the law of my own growth 
was the law of the universe and explained the 
meaning of my own life. But there came 
another time when I had ceased to grow, and I 
felt that I was not developing but drying up ; 
my muscles grew weaker, my teeth began to fall 
out, and I saw that this law of growth not only 
explained nothing but that such a law did not 
and could not exist ; that I had taken for a 
general law what only affected myself at a 
given age. 

On looking more closely into the nature of 
this pretended law, it was clear to me that 
there could be no law of eternal development ; 
that to say everything in infinite space and 
time is developed, complicated, differentiated, 
and perfected, is to talk nonsense. Such words 
have no meaning, for the infinite can know 
nothing of simple and compound, of past and 
future, of better and worse*.* It was a personal 
question that was of such importance to me, 
and which remained without an answer: 



MY CONFESSION. 41 

"What am I myself with all my desires?" 
I understood that the acquirement of knowl- 
edge was interesting and attractive, but that it 
could only give clear and exact results in pro- 
portion to its inapplicability to the question of 
life. The less it had to do with these ques- 
tions, the clearer and more exact it was; the 
more it took the character of a solution of 
these questions, the obscurer and less attractive 
they became. (If we turn to those branches of 
knowledge in which men have tried to find a 
solution to the problem of life, to physiology, 
psychology, biology, sociology, we meet with a 
striking poverty of thought, with the greatest 
(obscurityPwith an utterly unjustifiable preten- 
sion to decide questions beyond their compe- 
tence, and a constant contradiction of one 
thinker by another, and even by himself. Tf 
we turn to the branches of knowledge which 
are not concerned with the problem of life, but 
find an answer to their own particular scien- 
tific questions, we are lost in admiration of 
man's mental powers ; (but we know before- 
hand that we shall get no answer to our 
questions about life itself,; for these branches 



42 MY CONFESSION. 

of knowledge directly ignore all questions 
concerning iO 

Those who profess them say, "We cannot 
tell you what you are and why you live ; such 
questions we do not study?) But if you wish to 
know the laws of light, of chemical affinities, of 
the development of organisms ; if you wish to 
know the laws that govern different bodies, 
their form, and relations to number and size ; if 
you wish to know the laws of your own mind, 
we can give you clear, exact, and absolutely 
certain answers on every point." The relation 
of experimental science to the question of the 
meaning of life may be put as follows : Ques- 
tion, 4 <Why do I live ? " Answer, " Infinitely 
small particles, in infinite combinations, in end- 
less space and endless time, eternally change 
their forms, and when you have learned the 
laws of these changes, you will know why you 
live." I used to say to myself when theorizing, 
" Spiritual causes lie at the root of man's life 
and development, and they are the ideals which 
govern him. These ideals find expression in 
religion, in science, in art, and in the forms of 
government, and rise higher, from one stage to 



MY CONFESSION. 43 

another, till man at last reaches his highest 
good. I am myself a man, and am therefore 
called upon to assist in making the ideals of 
humanity known and accepted." 

In the days of my mental weakness this 
reasoning sufficed for me ; but as soon as the 
problem of life really, as it were, arose within 
me, \$he whole theory fell to pieces at once. 
Not to speak of the dishonest inaccuracy, by 
which learning of this kind is made to give as 
general results those due to the study of but a 
small part of mankind; not to speak of the 
many contradictions among the various cham- 
pions of this theory, as to what are the ideals of 
humanity ; the strangeness, if it be not the silli- 
ness, of this way of thinking is that, in order 
to answer the question which occurs to every 
man — "What am I?" or "Why. do I live?" 
or " What am I to do ? " — we must first 
answer this other question : " What is the life 
of that unknown quantity to us, mankind, of 
which we are acquainted with but one minute 
part in one minute period of time ? " 
Jin order to understand what he is himself, a 
man must first know what that mysterious 



44 MY CONFESSION. 

humanity is, which is formed of other men like 
himself, and who again are ignorant of what 
they are. 

I confess there was a time when I believed 
this. That was when I had my own cherished 
ideals which determined my caprices, and I 
would strive to evolve a theory which should 
enable me to look upon my fancies as a law be- 
longing to humanity. As soon, however, as the 
question of the meaning of life made itself 
clearly felt within me, my theoretical answer 
was forever confuted. I understood that, as 
in the experimental sciences there are real 
sciences, and semi-sciences which pretend to 
give answers to questions beyond their compe- 
tence, so in the province of theoretical knowl- 
edge is there a wide range of highly cultivated 
philosophy which attempts to do the same. The 
semi-sciences of this division, jurisprudence and 
historical sociology, endeavor to decide the 
questions concerning man and his life, by de- 
ciding, each in his own way, another question, 
that of the life of humanity as a whole. 

But, as in the sphere of exact science, a man 
who earnestly seeks an answer to the question, 



MY CONFESSION 45 

"How am I to live?" cannot content himself 
with the answer that if he studies in infinite 
space and time the endless combinations and 
changes of infinite particles, he will know what 
his own life means, so a sincere man cannot be 
satisfied with this other answer, " Study the 
life of humanity as a whole, and then, though 
we know neither its beginning nor its end, and 
are ignorant of its parts, you will know what 
your life means/' 

It is the same with these (sham sciences as 
with the sham experimental ones ; they con- 
tain obscurity, inaccuracy, stupidity, and con- 
tradiction, exactly in proportion to their diver- 
gence from their proper sphere. The problem 
of exact science is the succession of cause and 
effect in material phenomena. If exact science 
raises the question of a finite cause, it stumbles 
against an absurdity. The problem of theoret- 
ical science is the conception of the uncaused 
existence of life. Directly the question of the 
cause of phenomena is raised — as, for instance, 
of social and historical phenomena — theoretical 
science lands also in an absurdity. Experi- 
mental science gives positive results, and shows 



46 MY CONFESSION. 

the grandeur of man's intellect, only when it 
does not inquire into finite causes ; while, on 
the contrary, theoretical science only shows 
the greatness of man's mental powers, is only a 
science at all, when it gets rid altogether of the 
succession of phenomena, and looks upon man 
only in relation to finite causes. Such in this 
department of science is the office of its most 
important branch, — of the one which is the 
pole, as it were, of all the others, — of meta- 
physics or philosophy. 

This science puts the clear question, " What 
am I, and what is the whole world around me ? 
Why do I and the world exist ?" and it has al- 
ways answered it in the same way. Whatever 
name the philosopher may give to the principle 
of life existing in me and in all other living 
beings, whether he call it an idea, a substance, a 
spirit, or a will, he still says ever that it is a 
reality, and that I have a real existence ; but 
why this is so he does not know, and does not 
try to explain if he is an exact thinker. 

I ask, " Why should this reality be ? What 
comes of the fact that it is and will be ? " 
Philosophy cannot answer, it can only itself put 



MY CONFESSION. 47 

the same question. If it be, then, a true phil- 
osophy, its whole labor consists in this, that it 
should put this question clearly. If it keep 
firmly to its proper sphere, it can only answer 
the question, " What am I and the whole world 
around me?" by saying, "All and nothing," 
and to that other question, "Why?" by add- 
ing, " I do not know." Thus, however I ex- 
amine and twist the theoretical replies of phil- 
osophy, I never receive an answer to my 
question ; and that, not as in the sphere of ex- 
perimental knowledge, because the answer does 
not relate to the question, but because here, al- 
though great mental labor has been applied 
directly to the question, there is no answer, 
and instead of one I get back my own question 
repeated in a more complicated form. 



VI. 



In my search for a solution of the problem of 
life I experienced the same feeling as a man 
who has lost himself in a wood. He comes to 
an open plain, climbs up a tree, and sees around 
him a space without end, but nowhere a house 
— he sees clearly that there can be none ; he 
goes into the thick of the wood, into the dark- 
ness, and sees darkness, but again no house. 
Thus had I lost my way in the wood of human 
knowledge, in the twilight of mathematical and 
experimental science, which opened out for me 
a clear and distant horizon in the direction of 
which there could be no house, and in the dark- 
ness of philosophy, plunging me into a greater 
gloom with every step I took, until I was. at last 
persuaded that there was, and could be, no 
issue. When I followed what seemed the bright 
light of learning, I saw that I had only turned 
aside from the real question. ^ Notwithstanding 
the attraction of the distant horizon unfolded 

48 



MY CONFESSION. 49 

so clearly before me, notwithstanding the charm 
of losing myself in the infinity of knowledge, I 
saw that the clearer it was the less was it 
needed by me, the less did it give me an 
answer to my question. 

I said to myself, "I know now all that 
science so obstinately seeks to learn ; but an 
answer to my question as to the meaning of 
my life is not to be obtained from science." I 
saw that philosophy, notwithstanding that, or 
perhaps because an answer to my question had 
become the direct object of its inquiries, gave 
no answer but the one I had given to myself, 
" What is the meaning of my life ? It has 
none. Or what will come of my life ? Noth- 
ing. Or why does all that is exist, and why 
do I exist? Because it does exist." When 
I turned to one branch of science, I ob- 
tained an endless number of exact answers 
to questions I had not proposed : about the 
chemical elements of the stars and planets, 
about the movement of the sun with the 
constellation of Hercules, on the origin of 
species and of man, about the infinitely small 
and weightless particles of ether ; but the only 



50 MY CONFESSION. 

answer to my question as to the meaning of my 
life was this, " You are what you call life ; that 
is, a temporary and accidental agglomeration of 
particles. The mutual action and reaction of 
these particles on each other has produced 
what you call your life. This agglomeration 
will continue during a certain time, then the 
reciprocal action of these particles will cease, 
and with it ends what you call your life and all 
your questions as well. You are an acciden- 
tally combined lump of something. The lump 
undergoes decomposition, this decomposition 
men call life ; the lump falls asunder, decom- 
position ceases, and with it all doubting." 
This is the answer from the clear and positive 
side of human knowledge, and if true to its own 
principles 5£ can give no other. 

Such an answer, however, is no answer to 
the question at all) I want to know the meaning 
of my life ; and that it is an infinite particle 
not only does not give a meaning to it, but 
destroys the possibility of a meaning. The 
compromise which experimental makes with 
theoretical science, when it is said that the 
meaning of life is development, and the efforts 



MY CONFESSION. 51 

made towards its attainment, from its obscurity 
and inaccuracy cannot be considered an answer. 
The theoretical side of human knowledge, 
when it keeps firmly to its own principles, 
through all time has ever answered and still 
answers one and the same, "The world is 
something which is eternal and not to be 
understood. The life of man is an inconceiv- 
able part of this inconceivable whole." 

Again I set aside all the compromises be- 
tween theoretical and experimental science 
which are the product of the sham sciences, 
(of so-called jurisprudence, of political economy, 
and of history. In these sciences we have 
again a false conception of development and 
perfection, with this difference, that formerly 
it was a development of everything, and now it 
is a development of human life." The inaccu- 
racy is again the same ; development and per- 
fection in infinity can have no object, no direc- 
tion, and therefore can give no answer to my 
question. Whenever theoretical knowledge is 
exact, where philosophy is true to itself, and 
does not simply serve, like what Schopenhauer 
calls '^professorial philosophy," to divide all 



52 MY CONFESSION. 

existing phenomena into new columns, and 
give to them new names — wherever the 
philosopher does not overlook the great 
question of all, the answer is always the same, 
the answer given by Socrates, Schopenhauer, 
Solomon, and Buddha. "We approach truth 
only in the proportion as we are farther from 
life," said Socrates, when preparing to die. 
fWhat do we who love truth seek in life ? In 
order to be free from the body and all the ills 
that accompany life in it. If so, then, how 
shall we not be glad of the approach of death? y 
(A wise man seeks death all his life, and 
death has no terrors for him?) This is what 
Schopenhauer says : " Accept will as the ulti- 
mate principle of the universe, and in all 
phenomena, from the unconscious tendencies 
of the unknown forces of nature to the con- 
scious activity of man, acknowledge only the 
objectivity of that will, and we still cannot get 
rid of this logical consequence, that directly 
that will uses its freedom to abdicate, to deny 
and destroy itself, all phenomena disappear 
with it, there is an end to the constant efforts 
and impulses now going on, without aim and 



MY CONFESSION. 53 

without intermission, in every degree of the 
objectivity in which and through which the 
universe exists, there is an end to the varieties 
of successive forms, and with form vanish its 
postulates, space and time, even to the last and 
fundamental elements of form, the subject and 
the object. If there is no will, no phenomenal 
appearance, then there is no universe. The 
only thing that remains to us is nothing. But 
this passage to annihilation is opposed by our 
own nature, by our will to live, which causes 
our own existence and that of the universe. 
That we so fear annihilation, or, what is the 
same, that we so wish to live, only shows that 
we ourselves are nothing but that wish, and 
know nothing beyond it. Consequently, what 
remains to us after the annihilation of will, 
except will again, is assuredly nothing; on 
the other hand, for those in whom will has 
destroyed itself, the whole of this material 
universe of ours, with all its suns and its milky 
ways — is nothing" 

'(Vanity of vanities, ,, says Solomon, " vanity 
of vanities, all is vanity. What profit hath a 
man of all his labor which he taketh under 



54 MY CONFESSION. 

the sun ? One generation passeth away, and 
another generation cometh : but the earth 
abideth forever. . . . The thing that hath 
been, it is that which shall be ; and that 
which is done is that which shall be done : 
and there is no new thing under the sun. 
Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, 
this is new ? it hath been already of old time, 
which was before us. There is no remem- 
brance of former things ; neither shall there 
be any remembrance of things that are to come 
with those that shall come after. 

"I the Preacher was king over Israel in 
Jerusalem. And I gave my heart to seek and 
search out by wisdom concerning all things that 
are done under heaven : this sore travail hath 
God given to the sons of man to be exercised 
therewith. I have seen all the works that are 
done under the sun ; and behold, all is vanity 
and vexation of spirit. ... I communed with 
mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to 
great estate, and have gotten more wisdom 
than all they that have been before me in 
Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great expe- 
rience of wisdom and knowledge. And 1 



MY CONFESSION. 55 

gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know 
madness and folly : I perceived that this also is 
vexation of spirit. , For in much wisdom is 
much grief : and he that increaseth knowledge 
increaseth sorrow. 

"I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will 
prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure : 
and, behold, this also is vanity. I said of 
laughter, It is mad : and of mirth, What doeth 
it? I sought in mine heart to give myself unto 
wine (yet acquainting mine heart with wis- 
dom), and to lay hold on folly, till I might 
see what was that good for the sons of men, 
which they should do under the heaven all 
the days of their life. I made me great works ; 
I builded me houses ; I planted me vineyards ; 
I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted 
trees in them of all kind of fruits ; I made me 
pools of water, to water therewith the wood 
that bringeth forth trees : I got me servants 
and maidens, and had servants born in my 
house ; also I had great possessions of great 
and small cattle above all that were in Jeru- 
salem before me : I gathered me also silver and 
gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of 



56 MY CONFESSION-. 

the provinces: I gat me men singers and 
women singers, and the delights of the sons of 
men, as musical instruments, and that of all 
sorts. So I was great, and increased more 
than all that were before me in Jerusalem : 
also my wisdom remained with me. And 
whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not 
from them, I withheld not mine heart from 
any joy. . . . Then I looked on all the works 
my hands had wrought, and on the labor that 
I had labored to do : and behold, all was 
vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no 
profit under the sun. 

^ And I turned myself to behold wisdom, 
and madness, and folly. . . . And I myself 
perceive also that one event happeneth to them 
all. Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth 
to the fool, so it happeneth even to me ; and 
why was I then more wise ? Then I said in 
my heart, that this also is vanity. For there 
is no remembrance of the wise more than of 
the fool forever ; seeing that which now is in 
the days to come shall be forgotten. And how 
dieth the wise man ? as the fool. 

" Therefore I hated life; because the work 



MY CONFESSION. 57 

that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto 
me : for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, 
I hated all my labor which I had taken under 
the sun : because I should leave it unto the 
man that shall be after me. . . . For what 
hath man of all his labor, and of the vexation 
of his heart, wherein he hath labored under 
the sun ? For all his days are sorrows, and his 
travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in 
the night. This is also vanity. There is noth- 
ing better for a man than that he should eat 
and drink, and that he should make his soul 
enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that 
it was from the hand of God. . . . 

"All things come alike to all: there is one 
event to the righteous, and to the wicked ; to 
the good and to the clean, and to the unclean ; 
to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacri- 
ficeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; 
and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an 
oath. This is an evil among all things that 
are done under the sun, that there is one event 
unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men 
is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while 
they live, and after that they go to the dead. 



58 MY CONFESSION. 

"For to him that is joined to all the living 
there is hope : for a living dog is better than a 
dead lion. For the living know that they 
shall die : but the dead know not anything, 
neither have they any more a reward; for the' 
memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, 
and their hatred, and their envy, is now per- 
ished; neither have they any more a portion for- 
ever in anything that is done under the sun." 

Thus speaks Solomon, or the one who wrote 
the above ; and this is what an Indian sage 
says: "Sakya Muni, the young and happy heir 
to a great throne, from whom had been kept 
the sight of illness, old age, and death, once 
while out driving saw a horrible-looking, tooth- 
less old man. The prince was much aston- 
ished, and asked the driver what it meant, and 
why the man was in such a pitiable and disgust- 
ing state. When he learned that this was the 
common lot of all men, and that he himself, 
prince and young though he was, must inevita- 
bly one day be the same, he was unable to con- 
tinue his drive, and ordered the carriage to be 
driven home, that he might have time to think 
it all over. He shut himself up alone and 



MY CONFESSION. 59 

thought it over. He probably thought of 
something which consoled him, for again he 
got into his carriage and drove off merry and 
happy. This time he is met by a sick man. 
He sees a worn-out, tottering man, who is 
quite blue in the face and has dim eyes. The 
prince stopped and asked what it was. When 
he was told that it was illness, that old men 
are subject to it, and he himself, young and 
happy prince though he was, might fall ill the 
next day, he again lost all desire for amuse- 
ment, and gave orders to drive home. There 
he again sought peace of mind, and probably 
found it, for soon after he started again, for 
the third time, in his carriage. This time, 
however, he saw something new also — some 
men were carrying something by. 'What is 
that?' 'A dead body.' 'What does a dead 
body mean ? ' asks the prince ; and he is told 
that to become one means to become what the 
man before him now is. The prince descends 
and approaches the body, uncovers it, and 
looks at it. * What will become of him ? ' asks 
the prince. He is told that the body will be 
thrust into a hole dug in the earth. ' Why ? ' 



60 MY CONFESSION. 

1 Because he will never be alive again, and 
only stench and worms can come from him.' 
4 And that is the lot of all men? And it will 
be so with me? I shall be put underground 
to stink and have worms come from me?' 
4 Yes.' ' Back ! I will not go for the drive, 
and never will go again.' " 

So Sakya Muni could find no comfort in life, 
and he decided that life was a very great evil, 
and applied all his energies to freeing himself 
and others from it, so that after death, life 
should in no way be renewed, and the very 
root of life should be destroyed. Thus speak 
all the Indian sages. Here we have the only 
direct answers which human wisdom can give 
to the problem of life. " The life of the body 
is evil and a lie, and so the annihilation of that 
life is a good for which we ought to wish," 
says Socrates. 

Life is what it ought not to be ; " an evil, 
and a passage from it into nothingness is the 
only good in life," says Schopenhauer. Every- 
thing in the world, both folly and wisdom, both 
riches and poverty, rejoicing and grief, all is 
vanity and worthless. Man dies and nothing 



MY CONFESSION. 61 

is left of him, and this again is vanity, says 
Solomon. 

"To live, knowing that sufferings, illness, 
old age, and death are inevitable, is not possi- 
ble; we must get rid of life, get rid of the 
possibility of living," says Buddha. 

find what these powerful minds have said, 
what millions on millions of men have thought 
and felt, has been thought and felt by me.?> 

Thus my wanderings over the fields of 
knowledge not only failed to cure me of my 
despair, but increased it. One branch of 
knowledge gave no answer at all to the prob- 
lem of life, another gave a direct answer which 
confirmed my despair, and showed that the 
state to which I had come was not the result 
of my going astray, of any mental disorder, 
but, on the contrary, of my thinking rightly, 
of my being in agreement with the conclusions 
of the most powerful intellects among man- 
kind. 

I could not be deceived. All was vanity. 
A misfortune to be born. Death was better 
than life, and life's burden must be got rid of. 



VII. 

Having failed to find an explanation in 
knowledge, I began to seek it in life itself, hop- 
ing to find it in the men who surrounded me ; 
and I began to watch men like myself, to 
observe how they lived, and how they practi- 
cally treated the question which had brought 
me to despair. 

And this is what I found among those of the 
same social position and culture as myself. 

I found that for those who occupied the 
same position as myself there were four means 
of escape from the terrible state in which we 
all were. 

Crhe first means of escape is through (igno- 
rance.) It consists in not perceiving and under- 
standing that life is an evil and an absurdity. 
People of this class — for the greater part 
[women) or men who are either very young or 
very stupid — have not understood the problem 
of life as it presented itself to Schopenhauer, 

62 



MY CONFESSION. 63 

to Solomon, and to Buddha^ They see neither 
the dragon awaiting them, nor the mice eating 
through the plant to which they cling, and 
they taste the drops of honey// But they only 
lick the honey for a time; something directs 
their attention to the dragon and the mice, and 
there is an end to their tasting>) (From these I 
could learn nothing: we cannot unknow what 
\^e do know. 

The second means of escape is the Epicu- 
rean. It consists in, while we know the hope- 
lessness of life, taking advantage of every good 
there is in it, in avoiding the sight of the 
dragon and mice, and in seeking the honey as 
best we can, especially wherever there is most 
of it. Solomon points out this issue from the 
difficulty thus : " Then I commended mirth, 
because a man hath no better thing under the 
sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: 
for that shall abide with him of his labor the 
days of his life, which God giveth him, under 
the sun. . . . Go thy way, eat thy bread with 
joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart. 
. . . Live joyfully with the wife whom thou 
lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, 



64 MY CONFESSIOX. 

which he hath given thee under the sun, all 
the days of thy vanity : for that is thy portion 
in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest 
under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth 
to do, do it with thy might; for there is no 
work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, 
in the grave, whither thou goesfc" 

Such is the way in which most people, who 
belong to the circle in which I move, reconcile 
themselves to their fate, and make living possi- 
ble. They know more of the good than the 
evil of life from the circumstances of their 
position, and their blunted moral perceptions 
enable them to forget that all their advantages 
are accidental, and that all men cannot have 
harems and palaces, like Solomon ; that for one 
man who has a thousand wives, there are thou- 
sands of men who have none, and for each pal- 
ace there must be thousands of men to build it 
with the(sweat of their brow) and that the same 
chance which has made me a Solomon to-day 
may make me Solomon's slave to-morrow 
The dulness of their imagination enables these 
men to forget what destroyed the peace of 
Buddha, the inevitable sickness, old age, and 



MY CONFESSION. 65 

death, which if not to-day, then to-morrow, 
must be the end of all their pleasures. 

fThus think and feel the majority of the men 
of our time of the u^per classes?) That some 
of them call their dulness of thought and imag- 
ination by the name of positive philosophy, 
does not, in my opinion, separate them from 
those who, in order not to see the real question, 
search for and lick the honey. I could not 
imitate such as these ; my imagination not 
being blunted like theirs, I could not artifi- 
cially prevent its action. Like every man who 
who really lives, I could not turn my eyes aside 
from the mice and the dragon, when I had 
once seen them.j 

(The third means of escape is through 
strength and energy of character. It consists 
in destroying life when we have perceived that^~ 
it is an evil and an absurdity. Only men of 
strong and unswerving character act thus. 
Understanding all the stupidity of the joke 
that is played with us, and understanding far 
better the happiness of the dead than of the 
living, they put an end at once to the parody 
of life, and bless any means of doing it — a 



66 MY CONFESSION, 

rope round the neck, water, a knife in the 
heart, or a railway train. The number of 
those in my own class who thus act continu- 
ally (in creases,' and those who do this are gener- 
ally in the prime of life, with their physical 
strength matured and unweakened, and with 
but few of the habits that undermine man's 
intellectual powers yet formed. I saw that 
this means of escape was the worthiest, and 
wished to make use of it. 

\The fourth means of escape is through weak- 
ness. It consists, though the evil and absur- 
dity of life are well known, in continuing to 
drag on, though aware that nothing can come 
of it. People of this class of mind know that 
death is better than life, but' have not the 
strength of character to act as their reason dic- 
tates, to have done with deceit and kill them- 
selves ; they seem to be waiting for something 
to happen. This way of escape is due solely to 
weakness, for if I know what is better, and it 
is within my reach, why not seize it? (To this 
class of men I myself belonged^ 

Thus do those of my own class, in four differ- 
ent ways, save themselves from a terrible con- 



MY CONFESSION. 67 

tradiction. With the most earnest intellectual 
efforts I could not find a fifth way. One way 
is to ignore life's being a meaningless jumble of 
vanity and evil, — not to know that it is better 
not to live. For me not to know this was im- 
possible, and when I once saw the truth, I 
could not shut my eyes to it. Another way is 
to make the best of life as it is without think- 
ing of the future. This, again, I could not do. 
/I, like Sakya Muni, could not drive to the 
pleasure-ground, when I knew of the existence 
of old age, suffering, and death.)) My imagina- 
tion was too lively for that. Moreover, my 
heart was ungladdened by the passing joys 
which fell for a few rare instants to my lot. 
The third way is, knowing that life is an evil 
and a foolish thing, to put an end to it, to kill 
one's self. I understood this, but still did not 
kill myself. The fourth way is to accept life 
as described by Solomon and Schopenhauer, to 
know that it is a stupid and ridiculous joke, 
and yet live on, to wash, dress, dine, talk, and 
even write books. This position was painful 
and disgusting to me, but I remained in it. 
I now see that I did not kill myself because 



68 MY CONFESSION. 

Q had, in a confused sort of way, an inkling 
that my ideas were wrong^ However persua- 
sive and unanswerable the idea, which I shared 
with the wisest on earth, that life has no mean- 
ing, appeared to me, I still felt a confused 
doubt in the truth of my conclusions, which 
formed itself thus : " My reason tells me that 
life is contrary to reason. If there is nothing 
higher than reason (and there is nothing), 
reason is the creator of my life ; were there no 
reason, there would be no life for me. How 
can it be that reason denies life, and is at the 
same time its creator ? Again, from the other 
side, if there were no life, I should have no 
reason, consequently reason is born of life, and 
life is all. Reason is the product of life, and 
yet it denies life." I felt that something here 
was wrong. I said tomj^self: "Life undoubt- 
edly has no meaning, and is evil, but I have 
lived and am still alive, and so also have lived 
and are living the whole human race. How is 
it, then ? Why do all men live, when all men 
are able to die ? Is it that I and Schopenhauer 
alone are wise enough to have understood the 
unmeaning emptiness and evil of life ? " 



MY CONFESSION. 69 

To see the inanity of life is a simple matter 
enough, and it has long been apparent to the 
simplest among us, but men still live on. Yes, 
men live on, and never think of calling in ques- 
tion the reasonableness of life ! 

My acquired knowledge, confirmed by the 
wisdom of the wisest of the world, showed me 
that everything on earth, organic or inorganic, 
was arranged with extraordinary wisdom, and 
that my own position alone was a foolish one. 
But, all the same, the enormous masses of those 
fools, my fellow-men, know nothing of the 
organic or inorganic structure of the world, but 
live on, and it seems to them that their lives 
are subjected to perfectly reasonable condi- 
tions ! 

Then I thought to myself: "feut what if 
there be something more for me to know?/ 
Surely this is the way in which ignorance acts. 
Why, it always saj^s exactly what I do now ! 
What men are ignorant of they say is stupid. 
It really comes to this, that mankind as a whole 
have always lived, and are living, as if they 
understood the meaning of life, for not doing 
so they could not live at all, and yet I say that 



70 MY CONFESSION. 

all this life has no meaning in it, and that I 
cannot live." 

Nobody prevents our denial of life by suicide, 
but, then, kill yourself and you will no longer 
argue about it. If you dislike life, kill yourself. 
If in your life you cannot find a reason for it, 
put an end to it, and do not go on talking and 
writing about being unable to understand life. 
You have got into a gay company, in which all 
are well satisfied, all know what they are doing, 
and you alone are wearied and repelled ; then 
get out of it ! 

And after all, then, what are we who, per- 
suaded of the necessity of suicide, still cannot 
bring ourselves to the act, but weak, inconsist- 
ent men, — to speak more plainly, stupid men, 
who carry about with them their stupidity, as 
the fool carries his name written upon his cap ? 

Our wisdom, indeed, however firmly it be 
grounded on truth, has not imparted to us a 
knowledge of the meaning of life, yet all the 
millions that share in the life of humanity do 
not doubt that life has a meaning. 

It is certainly true that, from the far-distant 
time when that life began of which even I 



MY CONFESSION. 71, 

know something, men lived who, though they 
knew what proved to me that life had no mean- 
ing, the argument of its inanity, still lived on, 
and gave to life a meaning of their own. Since 
any sort of life began for men, they have had 
some conception of their own about it, and 
have so lived down to my own time. All that 
is in and around me, physical or immaterial, it 
is all the fruit of their knowledge of life. The 
very mental instruments which I have em- 
ployed against that life, to condemn it, were 
fashioned, not by me, but by them. I was 
born, and bred, and have grown up, thanks to 
them. They dug out the iron, taught how to 
hew r down the forests, to tame the cows and the 
horses, to sow corn, to live one with another; 
they gave order and form to our life ; moreover, 
they taught me how to think and how to speak. 
And I, the work of their hands, their foster- 
child, the pupil of their thoughts and sayings, 
have proved to them they themselves had no 
meaning! "There must be something here," 
said I, " that is wrong.] I have made some mis- 
take." I could not, however, discover where 
the mistake lay. 



VIII. 

All these doubts, which I am now able to 
express more or less clearly, I could not have 
then explained. I then only felt that, despite 
the logical certainty of my conclusions as to 
the inanity of life, and confirmed as they were 
by the greatest thinkers, there was something 
wrong in them. Whether in the conclusion 
itself, or in the way of putting the question, I 
did not know ; I only felt that, though my rea- 
son was entirely convinced, that was not 
enough. All my reasoning could not induce 
me to act in accordance with my convictions, 
L £., to kill myself. I should not speak the truth, 
if I said that my reason alone brought me to 
the position in which I was. Reason had been 
at work no doubt, but something else had 
worked too, something which I can only call an 
instinctive consciousness of life. There also 
worked in me a force, which determined my at- 
tention to one thing rather than to another, and 

72 



MY CONFESSION. 73 

it was this that drew me out of my desperate 
position, and completely changed the current 
of my thoughts. This force led me to the idea 
that I, with thousands of other men like me, 
did not form the whole of mankind, —/that I 
was still ignorant of what human life wa?&; ^<f^f 

When I watched the restricted circle of 
those who were my equals in social position, I 
saw only people who did not understand the 
question, people who kept down their under- 
standing of it by the excitement of life, people 
who understood it and put an end to life, and 
people who, understanding, lived on through 
weakness, in despair. And I saw no others. 
It seemed to me that the small circle of 
learned, rich, and idle people, to which I myself 
belonged, formed the whole of humanity, and 
that the millions living outside it were animals, 
not men. 

However strange, improbable, and incon- 
ceivable it now seems to me, that I, reasoning 
about life, could overlook the life of mankind 
surrounding me on all sides, and fall into such 
an error as to think that the life of a Solomon, 
a Schopenhauer, and my own, was alone real 



74 MY CONFESSION, 

and fit, and the life lived by unconsidered mill- 
ions, a circumstance unworthy of attention — 
however strange this appears to me now, I see 
that it was so then. Led away by intellectual 
pride, it seemed to me not to be doubted that 
I, with Solomon and Schopenhauer, had put 
the question so exactly and truly that there 
could be no other form of it ; it seemed un- 
questionable that all these millions of men had 
failed to conceive the depth of the question, 
that I had sought the meaning of my life ; and 
it never once occurred to me to think, "But 
what meaning has been given, what meaning is 
given now, by the millions of those who have 
lived and are living on earth? " 

I long lived in this state of mental aberra- 
tion, which, though its theories are not always 
openly professed, is not the less common among 
those who are supposed to be the most learned 
and most liberal part of society. But whether, 
thanks to my strange kind of instinctive affec- 
tion for the laboring classes, which impelled 
me to understand them, and to see that they 
are not so stupid as we think, or thanks to the 
sincerity of my conviction that I could know 



MY CONFESSION. 75 

nothing beyond the advisability of hanging 
myself, I felt that, if I wished to live and un- 
derstand the meaning of life, I must seek it not 
amongst those who have lost their grasp on it, 
and wish to kill themselves, but among the 
millions of the living and the dead, who have 
made our life what it is, and on whom now 
rests the burden of our life and their own. 

So I watched the life common to such enor- 
mous numbers of the dead and the living, the 
life of simple, unlearned, and poor men, and 
found something quite different. I saw that 
all these millions, w r ith rare exceptions, did not 
come under any division of the classification 
which I had made ; I could not count them 
among those who do not understand the ques- 
tion, because they not only put it but answer it 
very clearly ; to count them among the Epicu- 
reans I was also unable, because their life has 
far more of privation and suffering than of 
enjoyment ; to count them amongst those who, 
against their reason, live through a life without 
meaning, was still less possible, because every 
act of their lives, and death itself, is explained 
by them. Self-murder they look upon as the 



; 



76 MY CONFESSION, 

greatest of evils. It appeared that throughout 
mankind there was a sense given to the mean- 
ing of life which I had neglected and despised. 
It came to this, that the knowledge based on 
reason denied a meaning to life, and declined 
to make it a subject of inquiry, while the 
meaning given by the millions that form the 
great whole of humanity was founded on a 
despised and fallacious knowledge. 

The knowledge based on reason, the knowl- 
edge of the learned and the wise, denies a 
meaning in life, and the great mass of all the 
rest of mankind have an unreasoning con- 
sciousness of life which gives a meaning to it. 

This unreasoning knowledge is the faith 
which I could not but reject! This is God, one 
and yet three ; this is the creation in six days, 
the devils and the angels ; and all that I cannot, 
while I keep my senses, understand.) My posi- 
tion was a terrible one. I knew that from the 
knowledge which reason has given man, I could 
get nothing but ihe denial of life, (and from 
faith nothing but the denial of reason,Ywhich 
last was even more impossible than the denial 
of life. The result of the former was that life 



MY CONFESSION. 77 

is an evil and that men know it to be one, that 
men may cease to live if they will, but that 
they always go on living — I myself lived on, 
though I had long known that life had no sense 
nor good in it. The result of the latter was 
that, in order to understand the meaning of 
life, I must abandon the guide without which 
there can be no meaning in anything, my rea- 
son itself. 



IX. 

I WAS stopped by a contradiction which 
could only be explained in two ways : either 
what I called reasonable was not so reasonable 
as I thought it, or what I called unreasonable 
was not so unreasonable as I thought it. I 
began by verifying the process of thinking 
through which I had been led to the conclu- 
sions of reasoning knowledge. 

On doing this I found the process complete 
without a flaw. The conclusion that life was 
nothing was inevitable ; but I discovered a 
mistake. The mistake was that I had not con- 
fined my thoughts to the question proposed. 
The question was, why should I live, i, e., what 
of real and imperishable will come of my shad- 
owy and perishable life — what meaning has 
my finite existence in the infinite universe ? 
And I had tried to answer this by studying 
life. 

It was evident that the decision of any num- 
ber of questions concerning life could not sat- 

78 



MY CONFESSION. 79 

isfy me, because my question, however simple 
it seemed at first, included the necessity of 
explaining infinity by infinity, and the con- 
trary. I asked myself what meaning my life 
had apart from time, causation, and space. 
After long and earnest efforts of thinking, I 
could only answer — none at all. 

Through all my reasoning with myself I con- 
stantly compared, and I could not do other- 
wise, the finite with the finite, and the infinite 
with the infinite, and the conclusion was conse- 
quently inevitable : a force is a force, matter is 
matter, will is will, infinity is infinity, nothing 
is nothing — and beyond that there was no re- 
sult. It was like what happens in mathematics, 
when instead of an equation to resolve we get 
identical terms. The process of solution is cor- 
rect, but our answer is a — a, x = x, or = 0. 
This happened to me in my inquiries into the 
meaning of my life. The answers given by 
science to the question were all " identity." 

Strict scientific inquiry, like that carried on 
by Descartes, begins undoubtedly with a doubt 
of everything, throws aside all knowledge 
founded on belief, and reconstructs all in accord- 



80 MY CONFESSION. 

ance with the laws of reason and experience, 
while it can give but one answer to the ques- 
tion about the meaning of life, the one which I 
myself obtained — an indefinite one. It seemed 
to me at first that science did give a positive 
answer, the answer of Schopenhauer : life has 
no meaning, it is an evil ; but, when I inquired 
more closely into the matter, I perceived that 
the answer was not positive, that it was my own 
feeling alone made me think it so/\ The answer 
is expressed in the same terms as is that of the 
Brahmins, of Solomon, and of Schopenhauer, 
and is only an indefinite one, — the identity of 
and 0, life is nothing. This philosophical 
knowledge denies nothing, but answers that the 
question cannot be decided by it, — that the 
matter remains indefinite. 

When I had come to this conclusion, I under- 
stood that it was useless to seek an answer to 
my question from* scientific knowledges because 
the latter only shows that no answer can be ob- 
tained till the question is put differently, — till 
the question be made to include the relation 
between the (finite and the infinite. I also un- 
derstood that, however unreasonable and mon- 



MY CONFESSION. 81 

strous the answers given by faith, they do bring 
in the relation of the finite to the infinite. 

However the question, How am I to live ? be 
put, the same answer is obtained — by the law 
of God. Will anything real and positive come 
of my life, and what ? Eternal torment, or 
eternal bliss. Is there a meaning in life not to 
be destroyed by death, and, if so, what ? Union 
with an infinite God, paradise. 

In this way I was compelled to admit that, 
besides the reasoning knowledge, which I once 
thought the only true knowledge, there was in 
every living man another kind of knowledge, an 
unreasoning one, but which gives a possibility / 
of living — (faith) 

All the unreasonableness of faith remained 
for me the same as ever, but I could not but 
confess that faith alone gave man an answer as 
to the meaning of life, and the consequent pos- 
sibility of living. 

When scientific reasoning brought me to the 
conclusion that my life had no meaning, life 
stood still in me, and I wished to end it. When 
I looked at the men around me, at humanity as 
a whole, I saw that men did live, and that they 



82 MY CONFESSION. 

affirmed their knowledge as to the meaning of 
life. For other men, as for myself, faith gave 
a possibility of living and a meaning to life. 

On examining life in other countries than my 
own, as well among my contemporaries as 
among those who have passed away, I found it 
but one and the same. From the beginning 
of the human race, wherever there is life there 
is the faith which makes life possible, and 
everywhere the leading characteristics of that 
faith are the same. 

Whatever answers any kind of faith ever 
gives to any one, every one of these answers 
clothes with infinity the finite existence of man, 
gives a meaning to life which triumphs over 
suffering, privation, and death. \£n faith, there- 
fore, alone is found a possibility of living and a 
meaning in life./ What is this faith? I under- 
stood that faith is not only the apprehension of 
things unseen, is not only a revelation (that is 
only a definition of one of the signs of faith), is 
not the relation of man to God (faith must first 
be determined, and then God, and not faith 
through God), and is not, as it has so often 
been understood, acquiescence — faith is the 



MY CONFESSION. 83 

knowledge of the meaning of man's life, 
through which man does not destroy himself, 
but lives. \{<aith is the force -of life.N 

If a man lives, he believes in something. If 
he did not believe that there was something to 
live for, he would not live. If he does not see 
and understand the unreality of the finite, he 
believes in the finite ; if he sees that unreality, 
he must believe in the infinite. (Without faith 
there is no life.y 

I then went back upon all the past stages of 
my mental state, and was terrified. It was now 
clear to me that for any one to live it w^as 
necessary for him either to be ignorant of in- 
finity or to accept an explanation of the mean- 
ing of life which should equalize the finite and 
the infinite. Such an explanation I had, but I 
had no need of it while I believed in the finite, 
and I began to apply to my explanation the 
tests of reason,(and in the light of the latter all 
former explanations were shown to be worth- 
less.^ But the time when I ceased to believe in 
the finite passed, and I tried to raise niy mental 
structure on the foundation that I knew an ex- 
planation which gave a meaning to life, but I 



84 MY CONFESSION. 

tried in vain. Like so many of the greatest 
minds of earth, I came only to the conclusion 
that = 0, and, though nothing else could have 
come of it, I was much astonished to have ob- 
tained such an answer to my problem. 

What did I do when I sought an answer in 
the study of experimental science ? I wanted 
to know why I lived, and to that end I studied 
everything outside myself. Clearly in this way 
I might learn much, but nothing of that which 
I needed. 

What did I do when I sought an answer in 
the study of philosophy ? I studied the 
thoughts of others in the same position as my- 
self, and who had no answer to the question — 
what is life ? Clearly I could in this way learn 
nothing but what I myself knew, namely, that 
it was impossible to know anything. 

What am I ? — a part of the infinite whole. 
(In those few words lay the whole problem., 

Could it be that men had only now begun to 
put this question to themselves? Could it be 
that no one before myself had asked this 
simple question, that must occur even to the 
mind of an intelligent child ? 



MY CONFESSION. 85 

Since man has been on earth this question 
has to a certainty been put, and to a certaintj" 
it has been understood that the decision of this 
question is equally unsatisfactory, whether the 
finite be compared with the finite, and the in- 
finite with the infinite, or the solution sought 
and expressed in the relation of the finite to the 
infinite. 

All these conceptions of the equality of the 
finite and the infinite, through which we receive 
the ideas of life, of God, of freedom, of good, 
when we submit them to logical analysis, will 
not bear the tests of reason} 

; If it were not so terrible, it would be laugh- 
able to think of the pride and self-confidence 
with which we, like children, pull out our 
watches, take away the spring, make a play- 
thing of them, and are then astonished that they 
will no longer keep time. 

The decision of the contradiction between 
the finite and the infinite, and such an answer 
to the question of what is life as shall enable 
us to live, is wanted by and is dear to us. The 
only answer is the one to be found everywhere, 
always, and among all nations, an answer 



86 MY CONFESSION. 

which has come down to us from the times in 
which the origin of human life is lost, an 
answer so difficult that we could never our- 
selves have come to it — this answer we in our 
careless indifference get rid of, by again rais- 
ing the question which presents itself to every 
one, but which no one can answer. 
(The conception of an infinite God, of the 
divinity of the soul, of the way in which the 
affairs of men are related to God, of the unity 
and reality of the spirit, man's conception of 
moral good and evil, these are conceptions 
worked out through the infinite mental labors 
of mankind ; conceptions without which there 
would be no life, without which I should not 
myself exist^nd yet I dare to reject the labors 
of the whole human race, and to venture on 
working out the problem again in my own way 
alone. 

I did not at the time think so, but the germs 
of these thoughts were already within me. (I 
understood (1) that the position assumed by 
Schopenhauer, Solomon, and myself, with all 
our wisdom, was a foolish one: we understand 
that life is an evil, and yet we live. This 



MY CONFESSION, 87 

clearly is foolish, because if life is foolish, and 
I care so much for reason, life should be put 
an end to, and then there would be no one to 
deny it. (2) I understood that all our argu- 
ments turned in a charmed circle, like a cog- 
wheel the teeth of which no longer catch in 
another. However much and however well we 
reason, we get no answer to our question, it 
will always be = 0, and consequently our 
method is probably wrong. (3) I began to 
understand that in the answers given by faith J^/ ■■ :V.."£r; 
was to be found the deepest source of human 
wisdom, that I had no reasonable right to 
reject them, and that they alone solved the 
problem of lifeT^ 



I understood what I have just stated, but 
my heart was none the lighter for it. 

I was now ready to accept any faith that did 
not require of me a direct denial of reason, for 
that would be to act a lie ; and I studied the 
books of the Buddhists and the Mahometans, 
and especially also Christianity, both in its 
writings and in the lives of its professors 
around me. 

I naturally turned my attention at first to 
the believers in my own immediate circle, to 
learned men, to orthodox divines, to the elders 
among the monks, to the teachers of a new 
shade of doctrine, the so-called New Christians, 
who preach salvation through faith in a Re- 
deemer. I seized upon these believers, and 
demanded from them what they believed in, 
and what for them gave a meaning to life. 

Notwithstanding that T made every possible 
concession, that I avoided all disputes, I could 

88 



MY CONFESSION. 89 

not accept the faith of these men. I saw that 
what they called their faith did not explain 
but obscured the meaning of life, and that they 
professed it, not in order to answer the ques- 
tion as to life which had attracted me towards 
faith, but for some other purpose to which I 
was a stranger. 

I remember how terribly I felt the return of 
the old feeling of despair, after the hopes with 
which my connection with these people had 
from time to time inspired me. 

The more minutely they laid their doctrines 
before me, the more clearly I perceived their 
error, the more I lost all hope of finding in 
their faith an explanation of the meaning of 
life. 

I was not so much alienated by the unneces- 
sary and unreasonable doctrines which they had 
mingled with the Christian truths always so 
dear to me, as by the fact that their lives were 
like my own, the only difference being that 
(^they did not live according to the doctrines 
which they professed^ I felt that they de- 
ceived themselves, and that for them, as for 
myself, the only meaning of life was to live 



90 MY CONFESSION. 

' from hand to mouth, and take each for him- 
self all that his hands can lay hold on. Q saw 
this, because had the ideas of life which they 
conceived done away with fear, privation, 
suffering, and death, they would not have 
feared them. But these believers of my own 
class, the same as I myself, lived in comfort 
and abundance, struggled to increase and pre- 
serve it, were afraid of privation, suffering, and 
death ; and again, like myself and all other not 
true believers, satisfied the lusts of the flesh, 
and led lives as evil as, if not worse than, those 
of infidels themselves. 

fNo arguments were able to convince me of 
the sincerity of the faith of these men. Only 
actions, proving their conception of life to 
have destroyed that fear of poverty, illness, 
and death, so strong in myself, could have con- 
vinced me, and such actions among them I 
could not see. Such actions, I saw, indeed, 
among the open infidels of my own class in life, 
but never among its so-called believers. 

(I understood, then, that the faith of these 
men was not the faith which I sought; that it 
was no faith at all, but only an Epicurean con- 



MY CONFESSION. 91 

solation. I understood that this faith, if it 
could not really console, could at least soothe 
the repentant mind of a Solomon on his death- 
bed, but that it could not serve the enormous 
majority of mankind, who are born, not to be 
comforted by the labors of others,vbut to create 
a life for themselves. For mankind to live, for 
it to continue to live and be conscious of the 
meaning of its life, all these millions must have 
another and a true conception of faith. It was 
not, then, that I, Solomon, and Schopenhauer 
had not killed ourselves, which convinced me 
that faith existed, but that these millions have 
lived and are now living, carrying along with 
them on the impulse of their life both Solomon 
and ourselves. 

( I began to draw nearer to the believers 
among the poor, the simple, and the ignorant, 
the pilgrims, the monks, the sectaries, and the 
peasants. The doctrines of these men of the 
people, like those of the pretended believers of 
my own class, were Christian. Here also 
much that was superstitious w T as mingled with 
the truths of Christianity, but with this differ- 
ence, that the superstition of the believers of 



92 MY CONFESSION, 

my own class was not needed by them, and 
never influenced their lives beyond serving as 
a kind of Epicurean distraction, while the 
superstition of the believing laboring class was 
so interwoven with their lives that it was 
impossible to conceive them without it — it 
was a necessary condition of their living at all. 
The whole life of the believers of my own class 
was in flat contradiction with their faith, and 
the whole life of the believers of the people 
was a confirmation of the meaning of life 
which their faith gave them. 

Thus I began to study the lives and the 
doctrines of the people, and the more I studied 
the more I became convinced that a true faith 
was among them, that their faith was for them 
a necessary thing, and alone gave them a 
meaning in life and a possibility of living. In 
direct opposition to what I saw in my own 
circle — the possibility of living without faith, 
and not one in a thousand who professed 
himself a believer — amongst the people there 
was not in thousands a single unbeliever. 
In direct opposition to what I saw in my 
own circle — a whole life spent in idleness, 



MY CONFESSION. 93 

amusement, and dissatisfaction with life — I 
saw among the people whole lives passed in 
heavy labor and unrepining content. In 
direct opposition to what I saw in my own 
circle — men resisting and indignant with the 
privations and sufferings of their lot — the peo- 
ple unhesitatingly and unresistingly accepting 
illness and sorrow, in the quiet and firm con- 
viction that all was for the best/) In contradic- 
tion to the theory that the less learned we are 
the less we understand the meaning of life, and 
see in our sufferings and death but an evil 
joke, these men of the people live, suffer, and 
draw near to death, in quiet confidence and 
oftenest with joy. In contradiction to the 
fact that an easy death, without terror or 
despair, is a rare exception in my own class, 
a death which is uneasy, rebellious, and sor- 
rowful is among the people the rarest excep- 
tion of all. vThese men, deprived of all that 
for us and for Solomon makes the only good 
in life, experience the highest happiness both 
in amount and kind.) I looked more carefully 
and more widely around me, I studied the lives 
of the past and contemporary masses of hu- 



94 MY CONFESSION-. 

manity, and I saw that, not two or three, not 
ten or a hundred, but thousands and mill- 
ions had so understood the meaning of life 
that they were able both to live and to die. 
fAl\ these men, infinitely divided by manners, 
powers of mind, education, and position, all 
alike in opposition to my ignorance, were 
well acquainted with the meaning of life 
and of death, quietly labored, endured priva- 
tion and suffering, lived and died, and saw 
in all this, not a vain, but a good thingX 

(I began to grow attached to these men. 
The more I learned of their lives, the lives 
of the living and of the dead of whom I 
read and heard, the more I liked them, and 
the easier I felt it so to live. I lived in 
this way during two years, and then there 
came a change which had long been preparing 
in me, and the symptoms of which I had 
always dimly felt: the life of my own circle 
of rich and learned men, not only became 
repulsive, but lost all meaning whatever^ All 
our actions, our reasoning, our science and 
art, all appeared to me in a new light. (I 
understood that it was all child's play,] that 



MY CONFESSION. 95 

it was useless to seek a meaning in it. The 
life of the working classes, of the whole of 
mankind, of those that create life, appeared 
to me in its true significance. I understood 
that this was life itself, and that the meaning 
given to this life was a true one, and I ac- 
cepted it. ) 



XI. 

When I remembered how these very doc- 
trines had repelled me, how senseless they 
had seemed when professed by men whose 
lives were spent in opposition to them, and 
how they had attracted me and seemed 
thoroughly reasonable when I saw men liv- 
ing in accordance with them, I understood 
why I had once rejected them and thought 
them unmeaning, why I now adopted them 
and thought them most reasonable. I under- 
stood that I had erred, and how I had erred. 
U had erred, not so much through having 
thought incorrectly, as through having lived 
ill. )I understood that the truth had been 
hidden from me, not so much because I had 
erred in my reasoning, as because I had led 
the exceptional life of an epicure bent on 
satisfying the lusts of the flesh. ^ I under- 
stood that my question as to wfiat my life 
was, and the answer, an evil, were in accord- 

96 



MY CONFESSION. 97 

ance with the truth of things. The mistake 
lay in my having applied an answer which 
only concerned myself to life in general. I 
had asked what my own life was, and the 
answer was, an evil and a thing without 
meaning. \Exactly so, my life was but a long 
indulgence of my passions ; it was a thing 
without meaning, an evil ; and such an answer, 
therefore, referred only to my own life, and 
not to human life in general. ) 

I understood the truth which I afterwards 
found in the Gospel; "(That men loved dark- 
ness rather than light, because their deeds 
were evil. ) For every man that doeth evil 
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, 
lest his deeds should be reproved." ) I under- 
stood that, for the meaning of life to be under- 
stood, it was first necessary that life should 
be something more than an evil and unmean- 
ing thing discovered by the light of reason. 
I understood why I had so long been near 
to, without apprehending, this self-evident 
truth, and that if we would judge and 
speak of the life of mankind, we must take 
that life as a whole, and not merely certain 
parasitic adjuncts to it. J 



98 MY CONFESSION. 

This truth was always a truth, as 2 X 2 = 4, 
but I had not accepted it, because, besides 
acknowledging 2 X 2 = 4, I should have ac- 
knowledged that I was evil. It was of more 
importance to me to feel that I was good, more 
binding on me, than to believe 2x2 = 4. 
I loved good men, I hated myself, and I ac- 
cepted truth. Now it was all clear to me/) 
What if the executioner, who passes his life 
in torturing and cutting off heads, or a con- 
firmed drunkard, asked himself the question, 
What is life ? he could but get the same 
answer as a madman would give, who had 
shut himself up for life in a darkened chamber, 
and who believed that he would perish if he 
left it; and that answer could but be — Life 
is a monstrous evil. 

The answer would be a true one, but only 
for the man who gave it. Here, then, was I 
such a madman ? Were ail of us rich, clever, 
idle men, mad like this ? I understood at last 
that we were ; that I, at any rate, was.) Look 
at the birds ; they live but to fly, to pick up 
their food, to build their nests, and when I see 
them doing this their gladness rejoices me. 



MY CONFESSION. 99 

The goat, the hare, the wolf live but to feed 
and multiply, and bring up their young; and 
when I see them doing this, I am well con- 
vinced of their happiness, and that their life is 
a reasonable one. What, then, should man do ? 
He also must gain his living like the animals, 
but with this difference, that he will perish if 
he attempt it alone ; he must labor, not for 
himself, but for all.! And when he does so, I 
am firmly convinced he is happy, and his life is 
a reasonable oneTj 

What had I done during my thirty years of 
conscious life? I had not only not helped the 
life of others, I had done nothing for my own. 
I had lived the life of a parasite, and contented 
myself with my ignorance of the reason why I 
lived at all. If the meaning of the life of man 
lies in his having to work out his life himself, 
how could I, who during thirty years had done 
my best to ruin my own life and that of others, 
expect to receive any other answer to my ques- 
tioning of life but this, that my life was an evil 
and had no meaning in it ? It was an evil ; it 
was without meaning. 

The life of the world goes on through the will 






100 MY CONFESSION. 

of some one. [Some one makes our own life and 
that of the universe his own inscrutable care^|^^r4: 
To have a hope of understanding what that 
will means, we must first carry it out, we must 
do what is required of us. ^Unless I do what is 
required of me, I can never know what that 
may be, and much less know what is required 
of us all and of the whole universe^ 

ili a naked, hungry beggar be taken from the 
cross-roads into an enclosed space in a splendid 
establishment, to be well clothed and fed, and 
made to work a handle up and down, it is evi- 
dent that the beggar, before seeking to know 
why he has been taken, why he must work the 
handle, whether the arrangements of the estab- 
lishment are reasonable or not, must first do as 
he is directed. If he do so he will find that the 
handle works a pump, the pump draws up 
water, and the water flows into numerous chan- 
nels for watering the earth. He will then be 
taken from the well and set to other work ; he 
will gather fruits and enter into the joy of his 
lord. As he passes from less to more important 
labors, he will understand better and better 
the arrangements of the whole establishment ; 



MY CONFESSION. 101 

and he will take his share in them without once 
stopping to ask why he is there, nor will he 
ever think of reproaching the lord of that place. 
And thus it is with those that do the will of 
their master ; no reproaches come from simple 
and ignorant working-men, from those whom 
we look upon as brutes. But we the while, wise 
men that we are, devour the goods of the mas- 
ter, and do nothing of that which he wills us to 
do ; but instead, seat ourselves in a circle to 
argue why we should move the handle, for that 
seems to us stupid.) And when we have 
thought it all out, what is our conclusion? 
Why, that the master is stupid, or that there is 
none, while we ourselves are wise, only we feel 
that we are fit for nothing, and that we must 
somehow or other get rid of ourselves. 



XII. 

My conviction of the error into which all 
knowledge based on reason must fall assisted 
me in freeing myself from the seductions of 
idle reasoning. The conviction that a knowl- 
edge of truth can only be gained by living, led 
me to doubt the justness of my own life , but I 
had only to get out of my own particular 
groove, and look around me to observe the sim- 
ple life of the real working class, to understand 
that such a life was the only real one. I 
understood that, if I wished to understand life 
and its meaning, I must live, not the life of a 
parasite, but a real life ; and, accepting the 
meaning given to it by the combined lives of 
those that really form the great human whole, 
submit it to a close examination. 

At the time I am speaking of, the following 
was my position. 

During the whole of that year, when I was 
constantly asking myself whether I should or 
should not put an end to it all with a cord or a 

102 



MY CONFESSION. 103 

pistol, during the time that my mind was occu- 
pied with the thoughts which I have described, 
my heart was oppressed by a tormenting feel- 
ing, which I cannot describe otherwise than as 
a searching after God. 

This search after a God was not an act of my 
reason, but a feeling, and I say this advisedly, 
because it was opposed to my way of thinking ; 
it came from the heart. It was a feeling of 
dread, or orphanhood, of isolation amid things 
all apart from me, and of hope in a help I 
knew not from whom. Though I was well 
convinced of the impossibility of proving the 
existence of God — Kant had shown me, and I 
had thoroughly grasped his reasoning, that this 
did not admit of proof — I still sought to find 
a God, still hoped to do so, and still, from the 
force of former habits, addressed myself to one 
in prayer. Him whom I sought, however, I 
did not find. 

At times I went over in my mind the argu- 
ments of Kant and of Schopenhauer, showing 
the impossibility of proving the existence of the 
Deity ; at times I began to refute their reasoning. 

I would say to myself that causation is not in 



104 MY CONFESSION. 

the same category as thought and space and 
time. If I am, there is a cause of my being, 
and that the cause of all causes. That cause of 
all tilings is what is called God ; and I dwelt 
upon this idea, and strove with all the force 
that was in me to reach a consciousness of the 
presence of this cause. 

No sooner was I conscious of a power over 
me than I felt a possibility of living. Then I 
asked myself : " What is this cause, this 
power? How am I to think of it? What is 
my relation to what I call God ? " And only 
the old familiar answer came into my mind, 
u He is the creator, the giver of all." This 
answer did not satisfy me, and I felt that the 
staff of life failed me, I fell into great fear, and 
began to pray to Him whom I sought, that He 
would help me. But the more I prayed, the 
clearer it became that I was not heard, that 
there was no one to whom to pray. With de- 
spair in my heart that there was no God, I 
cried : " Lord, have mercy on me, and save ! 
O Lord, my God, teach me ! " But no one had 
mercy on me, and I felt that life stood still 
within me. 



MY CONFESSION. 105 

Again and again, however, the conviction 
came back to me that I could not have ap- 
peared on earth without any motive or mean- 
ing, — that I could not be such a fledgling 
dropped from a nest as I felt myself to be. 
What if I wail, as the fallen fledgling does on 
its back in the grass? It is because I know 
that a mother bore me, cared for me, fed me, 
and loved me. Where is that mother ? If I 
have been thrown out, then who threw me ? I 
cannot but see that some one who loved me 
brought me into being. Who is that some 
one ? Again the same answer, God. He 
knows and sees my search, my despair, my 
struggle. " He is," I said to myself. I had 
only to admit that for an instant to feel that 
life re-arose in me, to feel the possibility of ex- 
isting and the joy of it. Then, again, from the 
conviction of the existence of God, I passed to 
the consideration of our relation towards Him, 
and again I had before me the triune God, our 
Creator, who sent His Son, the Redeemer^ 
Again, I felt this to be a thing apart from me 
and from the world. This God melted, as ice 
melts, from before my eyes ; again there was 



106 MY CONFESSION. 

nothing left, again the source of life dried up. 
I fell once more into despair, and felt that I 
had nothing to do but to kill myself, while, 
worst of all, I felt also that I should never 
do it. 

I went through these changes of conviction 
and mood, not once, not twice, but hundreds 
of times — now joy and excitement, now despair 
from the knowledge of the impossibility of 
life. 

\ I remember one day in the early spring-time 
I was listening to the sounds of a wood,)and 
thinking only of one thing, the same of which 
T had constantly thought for two years — I was 
again seeking for a God. 

I said to myself : " It is well, there is no 
God, there is none that has a reality apart from 
my own imaginings, none as real as my own 
life — there is none such. Nothing, no mira- 
cles can prove there is, for miracles only exist 
in my own unreasonable imagination." 

And then I asked myself: "But my concep- 
tion of the God whom I seek, whence comes 
it ? " And again life flashed joyously through 
my veins. All around me seemed to revive, to 



MY CONFESSION. 107 

have a new meaning. My joy, though, did not 
last long, for reason continued its work: "The 
conception of God is not God. Conception is 
what goes on within myself; the conception of 
God is an idea which I am able to rouse in my 
mind or not as I choose ; it is not what I seek, 
something without which life could not be." 
Then again all seemed to die around and with- 
in me, and again I wished to kill myself. 

After this I began to retrace the process 
which had gone on within myself, the hundred 
times repeated discouragement and revival. I 
remembered that I had lived only when I be- 
lieved in a God. As it was before, so it was 
now ; I had only to know God, and I lived ; I 
had only to forget Him, not to believe in Him, 
and I died. What was this discouragement 
and revival? I do not live when I lose faith 
in the existence of a God ; I should long ago 
have killed myself, if I had not had a dim hope 
of finding Him. I only really live when I feel 
and seek Him. "What more, then, do I 
seek?" A voice seemed to cry within me, 
"(This is He, He without whom there is no life. 
To know God and to live are one. God is life.^ 



108 MY CONFESSION. 

£Live to seek God, and life will not be with- 
out Him. And stronger than ever rose up life 
within and around me, and the light that then 
shone never left me again.**) 

Thus I was saved from self-murder. When 
and how this change in me took place I could 
not say. As gradually, imperceptibly as life 
had decayed in me, till I reached the impossi- 
bility of living, till life stood still, and I longed 
to kill myself, so gradually and imperceptibly 
I felt the glow and strength of life return to 
me. 

It was strange, but this feeling of the glow 
of life was no new sensation ; it was old enough, 
for I had been led away by it in the earlier 
part of my life. I returned, as it were, to the 
past, to childhood and my youth. I returned 
to faith in that Will which brought me into 
being and which required something of me ;\I 
returned to the belief that the one single aim 
of life should be to become better ; that is, to 
live in accordance with that Will ^ I returned 
to the idea that the expression of that Will was 
to be found in what, in the dim obscurity of 
the past, the great human unity had fashioned 



MY CONFESSION. 109 

for its own guidance; in other words, I 
returned to a belief in God, in moral per- 
fectibility, and in the tradition which gives 
a meaning to life. The difference w r as that 
formerly I had unconsciously accepted this, 
whereas now I knew that without it I could 
not live. 

The state of mind in which I then was may 
be likened to the following. It was as if I had 
suddenly found myself sitting in a boat which 
had been pushed off from some shore unknown 
to me, had been shown the direction of the 
opposite shore, had had oars given me, and had 
been left alone. I use the oars as best I can, 
and row on ; but the farther I go towards the 
centre, the stronger becomes the current which 
carries me out of my course, and the oftener I 
meet other navigators, like myself, carried 
away by the stream. There are here and there 
solitary sailors who row hard, there are others 
who have thrown down their oars, there are 
large boats, and enormous ships crowded with 
men ; some struggle against the stream, others 
glide on with it. The farther I get, the more, 
as I watch the long line floating down the cur- 



110 MY CONFESSION. 

rent, I forget the course pointed out to me as 
my own. In the very middle of the stream, 
beset by the crowd of boats and vessels, and 
carried like them along, I forget altogether in 
what direction I started, and abandon my oars. 
From all sides the joyful and exulting naviga- 
tors, as they row, or sail down stream, with 
one voice cry out to me that there can be no 
other direction. I believe them, and let my- 
self go with them. I am carried far, so far 
that I hear the roar of the rapids in which I 
must perish, and I already see boats that have 
been broken up within them. Then I come 
to myself. It is long before I clearly com- 
prehend what has happened. I see before 
me nothing but destruction. I am hurry- 
ing towards it; what, then, must I do? On 
looking back, however, I perceive a count- 
less multitude of boats engaged in a cease- 
less struggle against the force of the torrent, 
and then I remember all about the shore, 
the oars, and the course, and at once I begin 
to row hard up the stream and again towards 
the shore. 

The shore is God, the course tradition, the 



MY CONFESSION. Ill 

oars are the free-will given me to make for the 
shore to seek union with the Deity. And thus 
the vital force was renewed in me, and I began 
again to livey 



XIII. 

I BEKOUisrcED the life of my own class, for 
I had come to confess that it was not a real 
life, only the semblance of one, that its super- 
fluous luxury prevented the possibility of 
understanding life, and that in order to do so 
I must know, not an exceptional parasitic 
life, but the simple life of the working-classes, 
the life which fashions that of the world, and 
gives it the meaning which the working-classes 
accept. The simple laboring men around me 
were the Russian people, and I turned to this 
people and to the meaning which it gives to 
life. 

This meaning may, perhaps, be expressed as 
follows : — 

We have all of us come on earth by the will 
of God, and God has so created man that each 
of us is able to ruin or to save his soul. The 
problem of man's life being to save his soul, he 
must live after God's Word : to live after 

112 



MY CONFESSION. 113 

God's word, he must renounce all the pleasures 
of life, labor, be humble, endure, and be chari- 
table to all men. )This to the people is the 
meaning of the whole system of faith, as it has 
come down to them through, and is now given 
them by, the pastors of their Church and the 
traditions which exist among them. 

This meaning was clear to me, and dear to 
my heart. This popular faith, however, among 
the non-sectarian communities in which I 
moved, was inextricably bound up with some- 
thing else so incapable of being explained that 
it repelled me. I mean the sacraments of the 
Church, the fasts, and the bowing before relics 
and images. The people were unable to sepa- 
rate these things, and no more could I. 
Though many things belonging to the faith 
of the people appeared strange to me, I ac- 
cepted everything, I attended the church ser- 
vices, prayed morning and evening, fasted, 
prepared for the communion ; and, while doing 
all this, for the first time felt that my reason 
found nothing to object to. What had for- 
merly seemed to me impossible, now roused 
not the slightest opposition in me. 



114 MY CONFESSION. 

The position which I occupied with relation 
to questions of faith had become quite different 
to what it once was. Formerly, life itself had 
seemed to me full of meaning, and faith an 
arbitrary assertion of certain useless and un- 
reasonable propositions which had no direct 
bearing on life. I had tried to find out their 
meaning; and, once convinced they had none, 
had thrown them aside. Now, on the contrary, 
I knew for certain that my life had not and 
could not have any meaning, and that the 
propositions of faith, not only appeared no 
longer useless to me, but had been shown be- 
yond dispute by my own experience to be that 
which alone gave a meaning to life. Formerly 
I looked upon them as a worthless, illegible 
scrawl; now I did not understand them, but 
knew that they had a meaning, and resolved to 
find it out. 

Q reasoned thus: Faith springs, like man and 
his reason, from the mysterious first cause. 
That cause is God, in whom begin the body 
and the mind of man> As my body proceeded 
through successive gradations from God to me, 
so have my reason and my conception of life 



MY CONFESSION-. 115 

proceeded from Him, and consequently the 
steps of this process of development cannot be 
false. All that men sincerely believe in must 
be true ; it may be differently expressed, but it 
cannot be a lie, and consequently, if it seem 
to me a lie, that must be because I do not 
understand it. 

Again, I said to myself: The true office of 
faith is to give a meaning to life which death 
cannot destroy.*) It is only natural that for 
faith to give an answer to the questi on of the 
king dying amid every luxury, of the old and 
labor-worn slave, of the unthinking child, of 
the aged sage, of the half-witted old woman, 
of the happy girl full of the strong passions of 
youth, of all of both sexes under all possible dif- 
ferences of position and education, — it is only 
natural that, if there be but one answer to the 
one eternally repeated question — " Why do I 
live, and what will come of my life?" — the 
answer, though one and the same in reality, 
should be infinitely varied in its form ; that, in 
exact proportion to its unvarying unity, to its 
truth, and its depth, it should appear strange, 
and even monstrous, in the attempts to find 



116 MY CONFESSION. 

due expression which are owing to the bring- 
ing-up, and the social state of each individual 
answerer. But this reasoning, which justified 
the oddities of the ritual side of faith, was 
insufficient to make me feel that I had a right, 
in a matter like faith, now become the one bus- 
iness of my life, to take part in acts of which I 
still am doubtful. I ardently desired to be one 
with the people, and conform to the rites 
which they practised, but I could not do it. I 
felt that I should lie to myself, and mock what 
I held most sacred, if I did this thing. At 
this point our new Russian theologians came to 
my assistance. 

According to the explanation of these 
divines, the fundamental dogma of faith is the 
infallibility of the Church. From the accep- 
tance of this dogma follows, as a necessary con- 
sequence, the truth of all that is taught by 
the Church. The Church, as the assembly of 
believers united in love, and consequently pos- 
sessing true knowledge, becomes the founda- 
tion of my faith. I argued that the truth 
which is in God cannot be attained by any 
one man, — it can only be reached by the union 



MY CONFESSION. 117 

of all men through love. In order to attain 
the truth, we must not go each his own way; 
and, to avoid division, we must have love one 
to the other, and bear with things which we do 
not agree with. (JTruth is revealed in love, and, 
therefore, if we do not obey the ordinances of 
the Church, we destroy love, and make it im- 
possible for us to know tvuiliT) 

At the time I did not perceive the sophism 
involved in this reasoning. I did not then 
see that union through love may develop love 
to the highest degree, but can never give the 
truth that comes from God, as stated in the 
words of the Nicene Creed, — (mat love can 
never make any particular form of creed bind- 
ing on all believers. )I did not then see error 
in this reasoning, and, thanks to it, I was able 
to accept and practise all the rites of the Or- 
thodox Church, but without understanding the 
greater part of them. I struggled earnestly to 
set aside all reasoning, all contradictions, and 
endeavored to explain as reasonably as I could 
all the doctrines of the Church which presented 
any difficulty. 

While thus fulfilling the ordinances of the 



118 My confession. 

Church, I submitted my reason to the tradition 
adopted by the mass of my fellow-men. I 
united myself to my ancestors, to my beloved 
father, mother, and grandparents. They and 
all before them, lived, and believed, and 
brought me into being. I joined the millions 
of the people whom I loved. Moreover, there 
was nothing bad in all this, for bad with me 
meant the indulgence of the lusts of the flesh. 
When I got up early to attend divine service, I 
knew that I did well, were it only because, for 
the sake of a closer union with my ancestors 
and contemporaries, I tamed my intellectual 
pride, and, in order to seek for a meaning in 
life, sacrificed my bodily comfort. It was the 
same with preparing for the communion, the 
daily reading of prayers, the bowing to the 
ground, and the observance of all the fasts. 
However insignificant the sacrifices were, they 
were made in a good cause. I prepared for the 
communion, fasted, and observed regular hours 
for prayer both at home and at church. While 
listening to the church service, I weighed 
every word, and gave it a meaning whenever I 
could. At mass the words which appeared to 



MY CONFESSIOX. 119 

me to have most importance were the follow- 
ing: ^Let us love one another in unity.^ 
What follows — the confession of belief in 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost — 
I passed over, because I could not under- 
stand it. 



XIV. 

It was so necessary for me at that time to 
believe in order to live, that I unconsciously 
concealed from myself the contradictions and 
the obscurities in the commonly received doc- 
trines. 

This interpretation of the sense of the ritual 
had, however, its limits. Though the leading 
points of the Liturgy became clearer and 
clearer to me ; though I gave a kind of mean- 
ing to such expressions as " Remembering our 
Sovereign Lady, the most Holy Mother of God, 
and all the Saints, let us devote ourselves, 
each other, and our whole lives to the Christ 
God " ; though I explained the frequent repeti- 
tion of prayers for the Emperor and his family 
by the fact that they were more exposed to 
temptation than others, and were therefore 
more in need of prayer, and the prayers for 
victory over our enemies and opponents to 
mean victory over the principle of evil ; never- 
theless the hymn of the Cherubim, the prepara- 

120 



MY CONFESSION. 121 

tion of the bread and wine, the adoration of 
the Virgin — in short, two-thirds of the whole 
service — either remained for me without an 
explanation at all, or made me feel that the 
only one I could apply to them was false, while 
to lie was to break off my connection with 
God, and lose utterly the possibility of believ- 
ing. 

I felt the same at the celebration of the 
principal Church holidays. I could under- 
stand the seventh day, the consecration of a 
day to communion with God. The great holi- 
day, however, was in remembrance of the 
Resurrection, the reality of which I could 
neither imagine nor understand. It was this 
which gave a name to the holiday in each 
week, to the Sunday, to the day on which the 
sacrament of the Eucharist was given, a mys- 
tery which to me was utterly inconceivable. 
The other twelve holidays, with the exception 
of Christmas, were all in remembrance of mira- 
cles, which I tried not to think of in order not 
to deny : the Ascension, Pentecost, Epiphany, 
the Intercession of the Virgin, and so on. On 
these holidays, I felt that the greatest impor- 



122 MY CONFESSION. 

tance was given to what I believed to be of the 
least, and I either held fast to the explanation 
which quieted me most, or else shut my eyes so 
as not to see what disquieted me. 

This feeling came upon me strongest when- 
ever I took part in the most ordinary, and 
generally considered the most important, sacra- 
ments, as christening and the holy communion. 
Here I had to do with nothing difficult, but 
with what was easy to be understood : such acts 
appeared to me a delusion, and I was on the 
horns of a dilemma — ■ to lie, or to reject. 

I shall never forget the painful feeling I ex- 
perienced when I took the communion for the 
first time after many years. The service, the 
confession, the prayers, all this was understood 
by me, and produced the glad conviction that 
the meaning of life lay open to me. The com- 
munion I explained to myself as an action 
done in remembrance of Christ, and as signify- 
ing a cleansing from sin and a complete accept- 
ance of Christ's teaching. If this explanation 
was an artificial one, I at least did not perceive 
it. It was such happiness for me to humble 
myself with a quiet heart before the priest, a 



MY CONFESSION. 123 

simple and mild old man, and repenting of my 
sins, to lay bare all the past troubles of my 
soul ; it was such happiness to be united in 
spirit with the meek Fathers of the Church who 
composed these prayers ; such happiness to be 
one with all who have believed and who do 
believe, that I could not feel my explanation 
was an artificial one. But when I drew near 
to the altar, and the priest called upon me to 
repeat that I believed that what I was about to 
swallow was the real body and blood, I felt a 
sharp pain at the heart ; it was no uncon- 
sidered word, it was the hard demand of one 
who could never have known what faith was. 

I now allow myself to say that it was a hard 
demand, but then I did not think so ; it was 
only exquisitely painful. I no longer thought, 
as I had done in my youth, that all was clear in 
life ; I had been drawn towards faith because 
outside it I had found nothing but ruin, and as 
therefore I could not throw faith aside, I had 
believed and submitted. I had found in my 
heart a feeling of humility and meekness which 
had helped me to do this. I humbled myself 
again, I swallowed the blood and the body 



124 MY CONFESSION. 

without any mocking thoughts in the wish to 
believe, but the shock had been given, and 
knowing what awaited me another time, I 
could never go again. 

I still continued an exact observance of the 
rites of the Church, and I still believed that the 
doctrines I followed were true ; and then there 
happened to me a thing which now is clear 
enough, but which then appeared to me very 
strange. 

I once listened to the discourse of an unlet- 
tered peasant pilgrim. He spoke of God, of 
faith, of life, and of salvation, and a knowledge 
of what faith was seemed open to me. 

I went amongst the people, familiarizing my- 
self with their ideas of life and faith, and the 
truth became clearer and clearer to me. It was 
the same when I read the " Martyrology " and 
" Prologues " ; they became my favorite books. 
With the exception of the miracles, and looking 
upon these as fables to bring out forcibly the 
thought, the reading of these books revealed to 
me the meaning of life. There I found the 
lives of Macarius the Great; of Tosaph the 
Prince (the story of Buddha) ; the discourses 



MY CONFESSION. 125 

of St. Chrysostom ; the story of the traveller in 
the well ; of the Monk who found gold ; of 
Peter the Publican ; — this is the history of the 
martyrs, of those who have all testified the 
same, that life does not end with death ; here 
we have the story of unlettered foolish men, 
who knew nothing of the doctrines of the 
Church. 

But no sooner did I mix with learned be- 
lievers, or consult their books, than doubts, 
uneasiness, and the bitterness of dispute came 
over me, and I felt that the more I studied 
their discourses the more I wandered from the 
truth, the nearer I came to the precipice. 



XV. 

How often have I not envied the peasant, 
unable to read or write, his lack of learning. 
The very doctrines of faith which to me were 
nonsense contained for him nothing that was 
false ; he was able to accept them and to 
believe in truth, the same truth in which I 
believed; while to me, unhappy one, it was 
clear that truth was connected with falsehood 
by the finest threads of difference, and that I 
could not receive it in such a form. 

In this condition I lived for three years, and 
when I first, like a new convert, little by little 
drew nearer to truth, and, led by an instinct, 
groped my way to the light, these obstacles 
seemed to me less formidable. When I failed 
to understand anything, I said, "I am wrong, I 
am wicked." But the more I became imbued 
with the spirit of the truths which I studied, 
the more surely I saw them to be the substratum 
of life, the greater and more formidable became 

126 



MY CONFESSION. 127 

the obstacles, the more clearly defined the line 
which I was unable to understand, and of which 
I could only seek an explanation through lying 
unto myself. 

Notwithstanding all my doubts and suffer- 
ings, I still remained in the Orthodox Church; 
but practical questions arose which required 
immediate decision, and the decisions of the 
Church, contrary to the elementary principles 
of the faith by which I lived, compelled me 
finally to abandon all communion with it. 

The questions were, in the first place, the 
relation of the Orthodox Church to other 
churches, to Catholicism and the so-called 
Sectaries. The interest which I took in this 
great question of faith led me at this time to 
form acquaintance with the professors of dif- 
ferent creeds, Catholics, Protestants, Old Be- 
lievers, New Dissenters, and others, and among 
them I found many who sincerely believed and 
obeyed the highest moral standard. I desired 
to be a brother to these men, and what came of 
it? The doctrines which had seemed to prom- 
ise me the union of all men in faith and love, 
in the persons of their best representatives, 



128 MY CONFESSION. 

showed themselves but capable of educating men 
in a lie ; resulted but in this, that what gives 
them strength to live is a temptation of the 
devil, the belief that they alone possess the pos- 
sibility of knowing truth. 

And I saw that the members of the Orthodox 
Church consider all those who do not profess 
the same faith as themselves to be heretics, 
exactly as Catholics and others account our 
Orthodoxy to be heresy; I saw that all con- 
sider others who did not adopt the same out- 
ward symbols and the same formulas of faith as 
themselves as their enemies. The Orthodox 
Church does this, though she tries to conceal 
it ; and it must be so, in the first place, because 
the assertion that you live a lie and I am in the 
truth is the hardest thing that one man can say 
to another ; in the second place, because a man 
who loves his children and his relations cannot 
but feel at enmity with those who desire to con- 
vert them to another faith. Moreover, this 
enmity increases as men learn more of the par- 
ticular doctrines which they adopt. Thus I, 
who had believed faith was to be found in the 
union of love, was unwillingly forced to see 



MY CONFESSION. 129 

that the doctrines of faith destroy the very 
thing which they should produce. 

This snare is so eiident, to men living like 
ourselves in countries where differing faiths are 
professed, and witnessing the contempt and self- 
confidence with which the Catholic absolutely 
rejects Protestantism and Orthodoxy, repaid by 
the scorn of the Orthodox for the Catholic and 
the Protestant, and that of the latter for both 
the others, while the same relation of enmity 
includes the Old Believers, the Revivalists, the 
Shakers, and all other creeds, that at first it 
perplexes us. 

We say to ourselves, " No, it cannot be so 
simple as that, and yet these men have not 
seen that when two propositions flatly con- 
tradict each other, the truth on which faith 
should rest is in neither. There must be some 
cause for this, there must be some explana- 
tion." I myself thought there was, and sought 
for it. I read everything I could get on the 
subject, and consulted with as many as I could, 
but the only explanation I obtained was that 
of the hussar, who accounts his regiment the 
first in the world, while his friend the lancer 



130 MY CONFESSION. 

says the same of his own. The clergy of all 
religions, the best among them, all told me of 
their belief that they alone were right and all 
others wrong, and that all they could do for 
those who were in error was to pray for them. 
I went to the Archimandrites, the Archpre- 
lates, the Priors, and the Monks, and asked 
them, but no one made the slightest attempt to 
explain this snare to me but one, and his ex- 
planation was such that I put no more ques- 
tions to any one. 

I said that, for every unbeliever who returns 
to belief (in which category I place the whole 
of the present young generation) the principal 
question is, Why is truth to be found in the 
Orthodox Church and not in the Lutheran nor 
the Catholic one ? He is taught in his gym- 
nasium, and he cannot but know what the 
peasant is ignorant of, that Protestants and 
Catholics equally affirm their own faith to be 
the only true one. Historical proofs, twisted 
by each party to serve their own purpose, are 
insufficient. 

Is it not possible, as I have already said, 
for a higher knowledge to issue from the 



MY CONFESSION. 131 

disappearance of these differences, as they 
do already disappear for those who sincerely 
believe ? Can we not go farther on our way 
to meet the Old Believers ? They affirm that 
our way of signing the cross, of singing halle- 
lujah, and of moving round the altar, is not 
the same as theirs. We say, " You believe 
in the Nicene Creed, in all the sacraments, and 
we also believe." Let us add, u Keep to that, 
and for the rest do as you will." We shall 
then be united to them by this, that we both 
place the essential points of faith above the 
unessential. Again, can we not say to Catho- 
lics, " You believe in certain things which are 
essential, and for what Concerns the dispute 
about the procession of the Trinity and the 
Pope, do as you please " ? Can we not say 
the same to the Protestant, and unite with 
him in what is really important? My fellow- 
disputant agreed with me, but added that 
such concessions draw down the reproach 
that the clergy have receded from the faith 
of their forefathers and favor dissent, while 
tlie office of those in authority in the Church 
is to preserve the purity of the Russian Greek 



132 MY CONFESSION. 

Orthodox faith as handed down from our 
ancestors. 

Then I understood it all. I am in search 
of faith, the staff and strength of life, while 
these men seek the best means of fulfilling 
in the sight of men certain human obligations, 
and having to deal with earthly affairs they 
fulfil them as ordinary men ever do. However 
much they may talk of their pity for the errors 
of their brethren, of praying for them at the 
throne of the Most High, for earthly affairs 
force is needed, and force always has been, is, 
and will be, applied. If two religious sects 
each believe that truth resides in themselves, 
and that the faith of the other is a lie, they 
will preach their doctrines in the hope of 
converting their brethren to the truth, and, if 
false doctrines are taught to the inexperienced 
sons of the Church who still tread in the ways 
of truth, she cannot but burn the books and 
banish the men who seduce her sons. What 
can be done with the Sectaries who, in their 
enthusiasm for a faith which the Church 
pronounces false, seduce her sons ? What 
can be done with them, but to cut off their 



MY CONFESSION. 133 

heads or imprison them ? In the time of Alexis 
Michaelovitch men were burnt at the stake ; in 
other words, the severest punishment of the 
time was applied, and in our days also the 
severest punishment is applied ; men are con- 
demned to solitary confinement. When I 
looked around me at all that was done in 
the name of religion, I was horrified, and 
almost entirely withdrew from the Orthodox 
Church. 

The second point which concerned the 
relations of the Church to the problems of 
life was her connection with war and execu- 
tions. It was the time of the war in Russia. 
Russians slew their brethren in the name of 
Christian love. Not to think of this was 
impossible. \ Not to see that murder is an 
evil, contrary to the very first principles 
of every faith, was impossible; (In the 
churches, however, men prayed for the suc- 
cess of our arms, and the teachers of religion 
accepted these murders as acts which were 
the consequence of faith. Not only murder 
in actual warfare was approved, but, during 
the troubles which ensued, the authorities 



134 MY CONFESSION. 

of the Church, her teachers, monks, and 
ascetics, approved the murder of erring and 
helpless youths. I looked round on all that 
was done by men who professed to be Chris- 
tians, and I was horrified. 



XVI. 

I ceased from this time to doubt, and 
became firmly convinced that all was not 
truth in the faith which I had joined. For- 
merly I should have said that all in this 
faith was false, but now it was impossible 
to say so. 

That the men of the people had a knowledge 
of truth was incontestable, for otherwise they 
could not live. Moreover, this knowledge of 
truth was open to me ; I already lived by 
it, and felt all its force, but in that same 
knowledge there was also error. Of that 
again I could not doubt. All, however, that 
had formerly repelled me now presented itself 
in a vivid light. Although I saw that there 
was less of what had repelled me as false 
among the people than among the represent- 
atives of the Church, I also saw that in 
the belief of the people what was false was 
mingled with what was true. 

135 



136 MY CONFESSION. 

Whence, then, came this truth and this 
falsehood? Both the falsehood and the truth 
came to them from what is called the Church ; 
both are included in the so-called sacred tradi- 
tions and writings. I was. thus, whether I 
would or not, brought to the study and analysis 
of these writings and traditions, a study which 
up to that time I had feared, and I turned to 
the study of theology, which I had once 
thrown aside w r ith contempt as useless. Then 
theology had seemed to me but profitless 
trifling with nonsense, for I was surrounded 
by the phenomena of life, and I thought them 
clear and full of meaning ; now I should have 
been glad to throw off ideas unsuited to a 
healthy state of mind, but I could not. 

On this doctrinal basis was founded, or 
at least with it was very intimately bound 
up, the only explanation of the meaning of 
the life I had so lately discovered. However 
strange it might seem to my worn but prac- 
tised intellect, it was the only hope of salva- 
tion. To be understood, it must be cautiously 
and carefully examined, even though the 
result might not be the certain knowledge 



MY CONFESSION. 137 

of science, which, aware as I was of the 
special character of religious inquiry, I did 
not and could not seek to obtain. 

I would not attempt to explain everything. 
I knew that the explanation of the whole, like 
the beginning of all things, was hidden in 
infinity. I wished to be brought to the in- 
evitable limit where the incomprehensible 
begins; I wished that what remained un- 
comprehended should be so, not because the 
mental impulse to inquiry was not just and 
natural (all such impulses are, and without 
them I could understand nothing), but because 
I had learned the limits of my own mind. 
I wished to understand so that every unex- 
plained proposition should appear to my rea- 
son necessarily unexplainable, and not an 
obligatory part of belief. I never doubted 
that the doctrines contained both truth and 
falsehood, and I was bound to separate the 
one from the other. I began to do this. 
What I found of false and of true, and to 
what results I came, forms the second part 
of this work,* which, if it be thought worth 

* My Religion. 



138 MY CONFESSION. 

while, and if it can be useful to any one, will 
probably be some day published. 

1879. 

The above was written by me three years 
ago. 

The other day, on looking over this part 
again, on returning to the succession of ideas 
and feelings through which I had passed while 
writing it, I saw a dream. 

This dream repeated for me in a condensed 
form all that I had lived through and described, 
and I therefore think that a description of it 
may, for those who have understood me, serve 
to render clearer, to refresh the remembrance 
of, and to collect into one whole, all that has 
been described at so much length in these 
pages. The dream was as follows. 

I am lying on my back in bed, and I feel 
neither particularly well and comfortable, nor 
the contrary. I begin to think whether it is 
well for me to lie, and something makes me 
feel uncomfortable in the legs ; if the bed be 
too short or ill-made, I know not, but something 
is not right. I move my legs about, and at the 



MY CONFESSION-. 139 

same time begin to think how and on what I 
am lying, a thing which previously had never 
troubled me. I examine the bed, and see that 
I am lying on a network of cords fastened to 
tha sides of the bedstead. My heels lie on one 
of these cords, my legs on another, and this is 
uncomfortable. I am somehow aware that the 
cords can be moved, and with my legs I push 
the cord away, and it seems to me that thus it 
will be easier. But I had pushed the cord too 
far ; I try to catch it with my legs, but this 
movement causes another cord to slip from 
under me, and my legs hang down. I move my 
body to get right again, convinced that it will 
be easy, but this movement causes other cords 
to slip and change their places beneath me, and 
I perceive that my position is altogether worse ; 
my whole body sinks and hangs without my 
legs touching the ground. I hold myself up 
only by the upper part of the back, and I feel 
now not only discomfort, but horror. I now 
begin to ask myself what I had not thought of 
before. I ask myself where I am, and on what 
I am lying. I begin to look round, and first I 
look below, to the place towards which my 



140 MY CONFESSION. 

body sank, and where I feel it must soon fall. 
I look below, and I cannot believe my eyes. 

I am on a height far above that of the high- 
est tower or mountain, a height beyond all my 
previous powers of conception. I cannot even 
make out whether I see anything or not below 
me, in the depths of that bottomless abyss over 
which I am hanging and into which I feel 
drawn. My heart ceases to beat, and horror 
fills my mind. To look down is too terrible. I 
feel that if I look down I shall slip from the 
last cord and perish. I stop looking, but not 
to look is still worse, for then I think of what 
will at once happen to me when the last cord 
breaks. I feel that I am losing in my terror 
the last remnant of my strength, and that my 
back is gradually sinking lower and lower. 
Another instant, and I shall fall. 

Then all at once came into my mind the 
thought that it could not be true, that it was a 
dream ; I will awake. I strive to wake myself 
and cannot. "What can I do?" I ask my- 
self, and as I put the question I look above. 

Above stretches another gulf. I look into 
this, and try to forget the abyss below, and I 



MY CONFESSION. 141 

do forget. The infinite depth repels and horri- 
fies me ; the infinite height attracts and sat- 
isfies me. I still hang on the last cords 
which have not yet slipped from under me over 
the precipice ; I know that I am hanging thus, 
but I look only upwards, and my fear leaves 
me. As happens in dreams, I hear a voice say- 
ing, " Look well ; it is there ! " I pierce farther 
and farther into the infinity above, and I feel 
that it calms me. I remember all that has hap- 
pened — how I moved my legs, how I was left 
hanging in air, how I was terrified, and how I 
was saved from my fears by looking above. I 
ask myself, "And now, am I not hanging 
still ? " and I feel in all my limbs, without look- 
ing, the support by which I am held. I per- 
ceive that I no longer hang nor fall, but have a 
fast hold. I question myself how it is that I 
hold on. I touch myself, I look around, and I 
see that under the middle of my body there 
passes a stay, and on looking up I find that I 
am lying perfectly balanced, and that it was 
this stay alone that held me up before. As it 
happens in dreams, the mechanism by which I 
am supported appears perfectly natural to me, 



142 MY CONFESSION. 

a thing to be easily understood, and not to 
be doubted, although this mechanism has no ap- 
parent sense when I am awake. In my sleep I 
was even astonished that I had not understood 
this before. At my bedside stands a pillar, the 
solidity of which is beyond doubt, though there 
is nothing for it to stand upon. From this 
pillar runs a cord, somehow cunningly and sim- 
ply fixed, and if I lie across this cord and look 
upwards, there cannot be even a question of 
my falling. All this was clear to me, and I 
was glad and easy in my mind. It seemed as 
if some one said to me, " See that you remem- 
ber ! " And I awoke. 

Lyof N. Tolstoi. 

1882. 



THE 

SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 



(A COMMENTARY ON" THE ESSENCE OF 
THE GOSPEL. ) 



143 



PREFACE. 



This short exposition of the Gospel is ex- 
tracted from a larger manuscript work, which 
cannot be published in Russia. The work 
consists of four parts. 

The contents of the present book have been 
extracted from the third part, which is an in- 
vestigation independent of previous interpreta- 
tions, and solely according to what has reached 
us of the teaching of Christ, as attributed to 
him, and related in the Gospels. 

The Gospels have been harmonized by me 
according jbo the sense of their teaching, and 
in so doing I have had to deviate but little 
from the order in which they stand ; so that 
there are rather fewer transpositions of the 
text in my rendering than in most other har- 
monies with which I am acquainted. The 
Gospel of John is taken in the same order as 
the original. 

145 



146 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

The division of the Gospel into twelve 
sections is the natural outcome of the bearing 
of its teaching, every two sections being united 
by a link of cause and consequence. 

I have also added the introduction from the 
first chapter of John's Gospel, in which he 
gives his view of the meaning of the whole 
teaching, and the conclusion from his Epistle 
(probably written before the Gospel), which 
represents a general deduction from all that 
precedes. The introduction and conclusion do 
not form an essential part, but only give a 
general view of the whole teaching ; and though 
both might be omitted without detriment (the 
more so that they are the words of John and 
not of Jesus), I have preserved them, because, 
when the teaching of Christ is taken in its 
plain meaning, these parts, in their connection 
with the whole and with each other, represent, 
in opposition to the strange interpretation of 
the Church, the simplest indication of the spirit 
in which Christ's meaning must be understood. 

At the head of each section, in addition to a 
short definition of the contents, I have inserted 
words corresponding to each from the prayer 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 147 

which Jesus gave to his disciples. When my 
work was ended, T was surprised to find, that 
r "the Lord's prayer is indeed nothing less than 
the whole teaching of Christ, expressed in the 
most condensed form, and in the identical 
system by which I had distributed the sections, 
every expression of it corresponding with them, 
in idea and order. In the manuscript of the 
third part, the Gospel, according to the four 
Evangelists, is related without the least omis- 
sion ; but in the present work the following 
passages have been left out : the conception, 
the birth of John Baptist, his imprisonment 
and death, the birth of Christ, his flight with 
Mary into Egypt, his miracles in Cana and 
Capernaum, the expulsion of demons, the walk- 
ing on the sea, the withering of the fig-tree, 
the raising of the dead, the resurrection of 
Christ, and the references to the prophecies 
fulfilled during his life. All this has been 
omitted in the present work, because, not con- 
taining any part of the teaching, but only 
describing events which took place before, 
during, and after the public life of Christ, 
these passages would render the exposition 



148 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

needlessly intricate ; nor do they contain 
in themselves either contradiction or proof, 
though their significance for Christianity has 
been that, to the eyes of unbelievers, they cor- 
roborate the divinity of Jesus ; but by those 
who, uninfluenced by the account of miracle, 
are unable, from the nature of the teaching 
itself, to doubt that divinity, they are naturally 
set aside, because felt to be needless. 

In the original full exposition, every digres- 
sion from the accepted translation, all inserted 
explanations and omissions are justified and 
proved by a comparison with different versions 
of the Gospel, by context, and by philological 
and other considerations. In the present work 
all these are omitted, because, however precise 
and correct may be the anatysis of separate 
passages, argument alone will convince no one 
as to a right understanding of the teaching 
itself. Such evidence must always lie in its 
own unity, clearness, simplicity, and complete- 
ness, and its force will arise from the sympathy 
with which it meets the consciousness of every 
man who is seeking for truth. 

Concerning all deviations from the version 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 149 

accepted by the churches, the reader must 
understand that the generally accepted notion 
as to the Gospels being, to the veriest letter, 
sacred, is not only a most profound error, but 
also a most gross and harmful deception. He 
must remember also that Christ himself wrote 
no book, as did philosophers like Plato or Mar- 
cus Aurelius ; never did he, like Socrates, trans- 
mit his teaching to learned or even to educated 
men, but spoke for the most part to an unlet- 
tered crowd, and that only long after his death 
was his teaching and life described. 

It must also not be forgotten that, out of a 
large number of such descriptive manuscripts, 
the Church selected at first three, adding later 
a fourth Gospel (that according to John), that 
out of the great mass of literature about Christ 
they could not but have accepted much that 
was not strictly accurate, and that there are as 
many doubtful passages in the Canonical Gos- 
pels as in the rejected Apocryphal writings. 
Nor does it follow, if the teaching of Christ 
were inspired, that a certain number of verses 
and letters in recording it should become so, or 
that certain selections should be considered 



150 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

■ 

sacred by the edict of. a man. Let it be con- 
sidered that these selected Gospels are the 
work of many human minds, that during cen- 
turies they underwent endless revisions, that 
all the Gospels of the fourth century which 
have reached us are written without punctua- 
tion or division into verse and chapter, and 
that the actual number of different renderings 
for Gospel passages is estimated at fifty thou- 
sand?") 

All this must be kept in view by the reader, 
lest he should be carried away by the idea that 
the Gospels have been transmitted to us direct 
from heaven in the identical form in which we 
at present accept them, and he must admit that 
it is not only unblamable to omit from them 
unnecessary passages, but that it is most un- 
reasonable to be withheld from doing so by the 
sentiment that considers sacred an appointed 
number of verses and syllables. 

On the other hand, I would not have it 
understood that because I do not consider the 
Gospels to be sacred books, directly descended 
from heaven, that therefore I regard them as 
mere monuments in the history of religious 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 151 

literature. I am conscious of both their theo- 
logical and historical bearing, but I desire to 
contemplate neither ; what (I see in Chris- 
tianity is not an exclusively divine revelation, 
nor a mere historical phenomenon, but a teach- 
ing which gives the meaning of life. ) 

When at the age of fifty, having asked all 
the reputed philosophers about me as to the 
meaning of life, and of myself, and having 
been told by them that life was an evil, and 
without meaning, and I myself an accidental 
concatenation of particles, I fell into despair, 
and thought to kill myself, I was brought to 
Christianity by the remembrance of a past 
time ; how in my childhood I and those about 
me, chiefly men uncorrupted by wealth, had a 
faith and saw a purpose, and with the light of 
this reality I called to question the wisdom of 
those of my own class, and tried to understand 
the answer of Christianity to believers. 

On studying the various forms of Christian 
religions, I found them to consist in large 
measure of the strangest superstitions, which, 
however, did not prevent many from finding 
life in their teaching. I then began to con- 



152 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST* S TEACHING. 

sider the source from which they were derived, 
and found in the Gospels an explanation of the 
meaning of life that perfectly satisfied me, one 
higher than anything I had known, or could 
imagine. And here, dazzled in new-found 
light, I found full answer for all questioning as 
to the meaning and purpose of my life and 
that of others, that explained the solutions of 
every other nation, and to my mind excelled 
them. I had sought a reply, not to some his- 
toric or theologic difficulty, but to the question 
of life ; and therefore to me now the chief 
matter is, not whether Jesus Christ was God, 
or from whom descended the Holy Ghost, or 
when and by whom was a certain Gospel 
written, or if it may not even be attributed 
to Christ ; but the light itself is of importance 
to me, that it still shines upon me after eigh- 
teen hundred years with undimmed brightness; 
but how to call it, or of what it consist, or who 
gave it existence, is immaterial to me. 

This introduction might here conclude if the 
Gospels were books but lately discovered,, or if 
the teaching of Christ had not undergone eigh- 
teen centuries of misinterpretation. In order 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST S TEACHING. 153 

to understand it, it is well to acquire a clear 
apprehension of the various systems with which 
it has been overlaid. 
CThe commonest and most subtle of these is 
the substitution, under the name of Christian 
doctrine, of the teaching of the Church for that 
of Christ which it professes to be, though com- 
posed from the explanations of most contradic- 
tory writings, in which the teaching of Christ 
forms but a small part, and that contorted and 
strained to accord with the explanation of the 
rest of the document. 

According to this misinterpretation, the 
teaching of Jesus is only one link in the chain 
of revelation that commenced with the creation 
of man, and continues in the Church to the 
present day. By it Jesus is called God, but 
such acceptance does not place in His teaching 
a deeper import than that contained in the 
words of Moses, in the Psalms, the Acts of 
the Apostles, the Epistles, the Apocalypse, 
the Decrees of the Councils, and the writings 
of the Fathers ; no understanding of the teach- 
ing of Christ is admitted which does not 
accord with that of the preceding and follow- 



154 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

ing revelation, and in furtherance of this object 
the least contradictory meaning for passages 
most hopelessly at variance in the Pentateuch, 
Psalms, Gospels, etc., is eagerly sought for. 

There naturally may be an innumerable num- 
ber of such interpretations having for their 
object, not the truth, but the reconciliation 
of contradictions in the Old and New Testa- 
ments, every man having a solution of his own, 
and an assertion that such is a continued reve- 
lation of the Holy Ghost, as the Epistles of 
Paul, the Decrees of the Councils, commenc- 
ing, " We and the Holy Ghost," the Edicts of 
the Popes, Synods, and of all sects and persons 
who claim and proclain that they are the 
mouthpiece of the Holy Spirit. All adopt 
the same groundless subterfuge for sanction 
as to the truth of their own interpretation, 
and they forget that a like method may be, 
and has been, employed by others who contra- 
dict them. 

Without entering into an analysis of the 
faiths so formed, each with its own declara- 
tion of truth, it is easy to see that the common 
ground of all, the equal inspiration of both 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 155 

Old and New Testament, forms an insurmount- 
able, self-erected obstacle to understanding the 
teaching of Christ, jand that hence emanates 
the possibility — nay, even the necessity — of a 
large number of hostile sects, whose formation 
can only be prevented by a reconciliation of all 
the varied revelations, or by a right conception 
of the teaching of one man, believed to be 
God. The teaching of Him who has descended 
to earth for the very sake of our instruction 
cannot be variously understood. If it was 
indeed God, He at least would have so dis- 
closed the truth that all might understand ; 
if He failed to do so, how then is He God?, 
or, if, indeed, the truths of God are such that 
even He cannot make them intelligible, how 
can men do so ? 

If Christ were not God, a great man only, 
then still less can his teaching engender sects ; 
for a great man is only great so far as he ex- 
presses clearly what others have rendered in- 
comprehensible. His words may be dark, but 
never misty, and there will, and must be, many 
ways into the darkness, but all will tend to- 
wards elucidation. All clear, deep insight into 



156 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

his obscurity, at one with the spirit of his 
teaching, uncontradicted by the plainer facts of 
it, and bringing the whole into conformity, 
will be accepted eagerly by all, and cannot of 
itself form sects, or rouse animosity. False 
interpretation will shed itself in time; and that 
alone which claims a source in the super- 
natural, which asserts itself as a revelation of 
the Holy Ghost, demanding recognition as the 
sole truth, and condemnation for every other, 
can become sectarian ; for the sectarianism of 
Christianity has its root in the idea that the 
Gospels a,re to be understood, not by them- 
selves, but in accordance with all so-called 
Holy Writings, and in the fact that the 
Church, professing a revelation of the Holy 
Ghost, which from its first descent upon the 
Apostles has been constantly transmitted by 
its own elected representatives, nowhere ex- 
presses clearly and finally what this revelation 
may be, and yet upon its supposed continuity 
builds a faith — and calls it Christ's. 

Like the Mahometans, who hold to the reve- 
lations of Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, these 
churchmen admit three also — of Moses, of 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 157 

Christ, and of the Holy Ghost ; but unlike the 
former, who subordinate those of Moses and 
of Christ to that of Mahomet, who, as the 
last revelation, explained all that preceded 
him, and claimed from faithful believers ab- 
solute credence ; they would accept all three, 
and call themselves after the name of the 
second, in order to combine the license of 
their own teaching with the authority of 
Christ's. 

Those who accept the revelation of Paul, of 
the Councils, of the Fathers, of the Pope, or of 
the Patriarchs, should state unmistakably that 
they do so, and should call their creed by the 
name of the last revealer. < Far from doing so, 
they preach doctrines most alien to Christ, and 
yet so claim his countenance that one might 
gather from them that it was Christ who de- 
clared that it was by his blood he had re- 
deemed the world, that God was a Trinity, 
that the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apos- 
tles and was transmitted to the priesthood by 
the laying on of hands, that for salvation 
seven sacraments are needed, that the com- 
munion must be celebrated in two aspects, and 



158 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

so forth ; whereas in all Christ's teaching there 
is no hint even at all this^ 

Such a faith might be called that of the 
Holy Ghost, for only one that acknowledges 
the revelation of Jesus Christ as final and 
in itself complete should be called by his 
name. 

Argument on such a point may appear need- 
less, yet up to the present the teaching of 
Christ has never been separated from an 
artificial and altogether unwarrantable con- 
nection with the Old Testament, on the one 
hand, and on the other from such arbitrary 
additions to, and perversions of, its reality 
as are continually made in the name of the 
Holy Ghost. 

Up to the present time, some, conceiving 
Christ to be the second person of the Trinity, 
accept his teaching only as it accords with that 
pseudo-revelation of the Holy Ghost which 
they find in the Old Testament, the Epistles, 
the Edicts of the Councils, and the Patristic 
writings, and preach a strange creed founded 
thereon which they assert to be the faith of 
Christ. Others, who do not believe Christ to 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 159 

be God, understand his teaching by the inter- 
pretation of Paul and others ; believing him to 
have been a man, they would, however, deprive 
him of the right every man may claim, of being 
only answerable for his own words, and in try- 
ing to explain his teaching credit him with what 
he would never have dreamed of saying. This 
school of critics, well represented by Renan, 
without giving themselves the trouble of ex- 
tricating in the teaching of Jesus what he 
taught himself from what is ascribed to him, 
without endeavoring to obtain from it any deep 
meaning, explain his appearance and the prop- 
agation of his faith by incidents in his life, 
and from the circumstances of his time. 'The 
problem, however, which they have failed to 
explain is, that eighteen hundred years ago 
there appeared a poor man who taught, was 
beaten, and executed ; and though since his 
time many others have in like manner perished 
for their belief, this one man is still thought 
by thousands to be — God. Churchmen tell 
us that he is so considered because so he 
is; but if he be not, how can the fact be 
explained ? 



160 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

And it is entirely overlooked by the critics 
of this school, who diligently investigate all the 
details of the life of Christ, that, however much 
they may disclose by such a process, they do in 
reality discover nothing ; could they even es- 
tablish the minutest details of his life, they 
would be as far as ever from the secret of his 
influence, which is hid, not with the people 
amongst whom he abode, nor by the history 
and superstition of the times, but in the nature 
of this man's teaching which made humanity 
single him out from amongst all other preach- 
ers, wid accept him as GodU- 

Explanation can only come from a special 
study of his teaching. And the solution is 
simple ; but it must be undertaken independ- 
ently of the many false interpretations volun- 
teered by men who neither wished nor were 
able to understand him. 

The modern school of criticism to which I 
have referred was so pleased with its own as- 
sertion of the non-divinity of Christ, that it has 
since directed all its efforts to complete the 
proof of his humanity, forgetting that the more 
successful be the process, the more difficult 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 161 

will the final solution be as to the reason of his 
influence. In order clearly to understand this 
singular error, it is only necessary to read an 
article by Havet, one of the imitators of Renan, 
who asserts that " J£sus n'avait rien de Chre- 
tien," or to find in Sourris a proposition which 
seems to give him pleasure — that Jesus Christ 
was a very rough and stupid man. 

It is not a contradiction of the divinity of 
Christ that is required, but an exposition of 
his teaching in all its purity, so lofty and so 
simple as to obtain for its founder the title of 
God. 

And therefore, if the reader belong to that 
large number of educated men, who, having 
been brought up in the religion of the Church, 
have recoiled from its contradiction of common 
sense and the conscience ; and if he have not 
lost all love and respect for the spirit of 
Christ's teaehingAl would ask him to consider 
that what has alienated him is equally foreign 
to Christ,^ who has been made responsible for 
all the monstrous parasitic tradition that has 
fastened about his words, and that to judge of 
Christ's Christianity he must study its effect 



1G2 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

upon its Founder ; (and if he do so, he will 
discover that it has no admixture of elements, 
no sympathy with superstition, no dregs, no 
darknesses ; but that it is the strictest, purest, 
and fullest system of metaphysical ethics, 
above the most ambitious ascent of human 
reason, and in the wide circle of which 
moves to its achievement all highest human 
effort) 

If the reader is one of those who profess 
the religion of the Church not for the 
attainment of personal advantage, but for 
their own inner welfare, I would ask him 
to consider how different a thing, despite 
its similarity of name, is the teaching in this 
book from that which he follows, and to 
decide, not whether the faith so offered him 
coincides with his own religion, but which 
of the two most agrees with his heart and 
reason. 

But if he belong to those who, professing the 
doctrines of the Church, hold to them, not 
from belief, but for convenience, then let him 
know that, however many adherents such a 
method may have, however powerful they may 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 163 

be, on whatever thrones they may seat them- 
selves, or by whatever high names they may be 
called, they are not the accusers, but the ac- 
cused. Let such remember that they have long 
ago said all that for themselves can be said ; 
that, had they succeeded in proving all they 
desire, the same has been done to its own sat- 
isfaction by each of the hundred creeds that on 
a mutual basis mutually reject each other , but 
that now not proof is demanded of them, but 
that they should justify themselves from the 
charge of blasphemy in having held the teach- 
ing of Esdra, the Councils, the Theophilacts, 
equal to that of Christ the God, and from the 
charge of calumny against God, in having pro- 
claimed as His teaching the fanaticism of 
their own hearts, and from the charge of decep- 
tion in having hid the word of God, and 
set up in its place their own religion of 
the Holy Ghost; and so depriving millions 
of men of the good Christ brought for them, 
have given to the world, for his peace and 
love, the froward countenance of malice and 
murder. 

Such have before them two alternatives: the 



164 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

rejection of the falsehood or the persecution * 
of those who so correct them, for which, while 
ending my writings, I prepare myself with joy 
and with fear for my weakness. 

* The English reader must remember that the author is 
still living under a system of religious repression. — Ed. 



INTRODUCTION. 



THE GOSPEL. THE GOOD TIDINGS OF JESUS 
CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD. 

The Understanding of Life. 

The announcement of Jesus Christ substi- 
tuted a conception of the meaning of life for 
faith in an external God. 

The Gospel is the announcement that the 
source of all is not an external God, as men 
think, but the Spirit of Life. And, therefore, 
in the place of what men call God, according 
to the Gospel, stands this spirit. 
£ Without it there is no life, all men are alive 
only through it, and those who do not under- 
stand this, but suppose the flesh to be the foun- 
dation of life, deprive themselves of the true 
life ; whereas those who understand that they 
are alive not through the flesh but through the 
spirit, have the true life that has been shown by 

Jesus ChristX 

165 



166 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

^Having conceived that the true life of man 
originates in the spirit, he gave men the teach- 
ing and example of that life in the body. 

Previous religions represented a law, stating 
what was, and what was not to be done for the 
worship of God. (^But the teaching of Christ 
consists in the understanding of life'. No one 
has ever seen or can know an external God, 
and therefore the worship of an external God 
cannot direct life. 

Only the acceptance of the source of all, an 
inward consciousness of the knowledge which 
flows from that source, points out the way to 
life. 



THE 

SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SON OF GOD. 

Man, the son of G-od, poioerless in the flesh, is 
free in the spirit. QOur Father.*) 

cChkist in his childhood called God his 
Father/) There was at that time in Judea a 
prophet called John, who preached the coming 
of God upon the earth, if men would change 
their lives, counting all men as equal ; would 
not offend but help each other ; that so His 
kingdom might be established. Having heard 
this preaching, Jesus retired from men into the 
wilderness in order to contemplate the life 
of man, and his relation to the eternal be- 
ginning of all, called God. He accepted as 
his Father the eternal source of all, which John 
had preached. 

Having stayed in the wilderness forty days 
167 



168 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

without food, he began to suffer from hunger, 
and thought to himself, I am the son of God 
the Almighty, and therefore I must be as 
He is ; but lo, I want to eat, and yet bread 
does not appear at my desire, therefore I am 
not almighty. Then he said to himself, Though 
I cannot create bread out of stone, yet I can 
refrain from bread; and so, if not almighty 
in the flesh, I can become so in the spirit, 
for I can conquer the flesh, and not in it, 
but in the spirit, be the son of God. But 
he said again to himself, If I am the son 
of a spirit, then I can renounce the flesh, 
and destroy it. And to this he answered, I 
am born through the spirit into the flesh ; such 
was the will of my Father, and I may not 
oppose it. But if thou canst not satisfy the 
desires of thy flesh, nor renounce it, thou 
shouldest work for it, and enjoy all the 
pleasures it can afford thee. And to this he 
replied, I can neither satisfy the desires of 
the flesh nor yet renounce it, but my life 
is almighty in the spirit of my Father, and 
therefore in the flesh I must serve, and work 
only for the spirit, the Father. 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 169 

And having become persuaded that the life 
of man is in the spirit of the Father, Jesus 
came out of the wilderness, and began to 
preach unto men. He declared that this 
spirit was in him, that henceforth the heavens 
were opened, and the powers of heaven had 
united with man, for whom a life of eternity 
and freedom had commenced, and that all 
men, however cursed by the flesh, might 
attain it. 



CHAPTER II. 

And therefore man must work, not for the flesh 
but according to the spirit. ( Which art in 
heaven.') 

The Jews, considering themselves true be- 
lievers, worshipped an external God, the 
Creator and Lord of the universe. 

According to them, this God had entered 
into an agreement with them, in which He 
promised to help them, and they to worship 
Him ; one of the chief conditions in the 
agreement being the keeping of the Sabbath, 
f Jesus said, The Sabbath is a human insti- 
tution. A man who lives in the spirit is 
above all external rites. The keeping of 
the Sabbath, like all rites of outward wor- 
ship, includes a delusion. We cannot do 
nothing on the Sabbath ; a good deed must 
be done at any time, and if the Sabbath 
hinders the doing of a good action, the Sabbath 
is evidently an error. 

170 



THE SPIRIT OF. CHRIST'S TEACHING. 171 

Another condition in this agreement with 
God was the avoidance of the society of those 
of another faith. ^Concerning this, Jesus said 
that God required not sacrifice but mutual 
love. ) He also said, referring to the rule of 
absolution and purification, that God requires 
charity before external cleanliness ; all such 
ceremonies, he said, were harmful, the very 
tradition of the Church an evil, as it leads 
men to neglect the most important deeds 
of love towards a father or mother, and to 
justify themselves by tradition. 

Concerning all that is eternal, the rules 
of the former law, which defined cases of 
defilement, Jesus said, Know all of you that 
nothing external can defile a man;yie is de- 
filed only by what he thinks and doesp 

After this he went to Jerusalem, the town 
that was considered sacred, and, entering the 
Temple which the orthodox believers of the 
time considered the abode of God, said that 
/man is more important than the Temple,/and 
that it is only necessary to love and to help 
one's neighbor. ^ Jesus said also that there is no 
need to worship God in any definite place,! 



172 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

but that we must worship the Father by deed 
and in the spirit, which is the consciousness in 
man of his sonship to the eternal Spirit, which 
may neither be seen nor shown. 

Temples are needless, for the true temple is 
the world cemented together with love.; and 
external worship is both false and hurtful 
when it encourages evil deeds, like that of 
the Jews which enjoined murder and the 
meglecting of parents, and because the man 
who is exact in the accomplishment of rites 
becomes self-satisfied, and neglects the doing 
of love. 7 

Man is the son of God by the spirit, and 
therefore he must worship the Father in the 
spirit. 



CHAPTER III. 

From the spirit of the Father hath proceeded the 
life of all men. (Hallowed be Thy name.} 

The disciples of John asked Jesus, What 
was his kingdom of God. He said, I and John 
preach the same kingdom ; it is that all men, 
however poor, may be blessed. John was the 
first who gave to the people the kingdom of 
God, not in an external form, but in the souls 
of men. 

The orthodox believers went to hear him, 
but understood nothing, for such can only con- 
ceive what themselves invent about God, and 
marvel that men refuse their inventions. But 
John preached the kingdom of God within 
men, and so out-went his predecessors that 
from his time the law, the prophets, and all ex- 
ternal worship became unnecessary, since it 
was disclosed that the kingdom of God was in 
the hearts of men. 

173 



17 J: THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

£ The beginning and end of all is in the soul. 
Every man recognizes, besides his bodily con- 
ception, a free spirit within himself, with a 
power of reasoning independent of the body. 
This spirit, infinite and proceeding from the 
infinite, is the beginning of all which we call 
God, and we know Him only through our 
knowledge of Him in ourselves. This spirit is 
the source of our life, and must be put above 
all, for by it we live, and having made it the 
foundation of our being, we receive eternal 
life. 

The Father who sent His spirit into men did 
not do so to deceive them with the loss of it, 
but that they might have it forever. We can- 
not choose life and death. 

(jLife in the spirit is death in the body ; in 
the spirit is life and good, in the body darkness 
and evil.) 

Belief in the spirit is the doing of good, un- 
belief is the doing of evil ; the one is life, the 
other death. God the Creator, the founder of 
all, we cannot know ; but we may believe that 
He has sown, in all alike, the spirit, which on 
good ground grows, and on bad fails., 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 175 

(^Only the spirit gives life to men, and it de- 
pends on them whether they keep or lose it. 
Evil does not exist for the spirit, for it is but 
the counterfeit of life. Existence or non-exist- 
ence : for every man, if he choose it, the king- 
dom of heaven within him. All may enter or 
refrain ; and he who possesses the life of the 
spirit has eternal life^ 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

And therefore the will of the Father is that all 
men should have life and happiness. (Thy 
kingdom, come?) 

(.Jesus had pity on men because they knew 
not true happiness, and he taught them. He 
said, Blessed are those who have no goods, no 
fame, and no care for these things, but wretched 
are they who seek wealth and honors ; for the 
poor and the oppressed obey the will of the 
Father, which the rich and the honored seek 
only from men in this life!) In order to fulfil 
the will of the Father, we must not fear to be 
poor and despised ; we must be glad of it, and 
thus show men in what true happiness consists. / 

In order to fulfil the will of the Father, 
which gives life and happiness to all men, we 
must fulfil five commandments. 

The first commandment — 
176 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 177 

To offend no one, and by no act to excite 
evil in others, for out of evil comes evil. 

The second commandment — 

To be in all things chaste, and not to quit 
the wife whom we have taken ; for the aban- 
doning of wives and the changing of them is 
the cause of all loose living in the world. 

The third commandment — 

Never to take an oath, because we can prom- 
ise nothing, for man is altogether in the hands 
of the Father, and oaths are imposed for wicked 
ends. 

The fourth commandment — 
/"Not to resist evil, to bear with offences, and 
to do yet more than is demanded of us ; neither 
to judge, nor to go to law, for every man is 
himself full of faults, and cannot teach. By 
seeking revenge men only teach others to do 
the sameo 

The fifth commandment — 

To make no distinction between our own 
countrymen and foreigners, for all men are the 
children of one Father. 

These five commandments should be ob- 
served, not to gain praise from man, but for 



178 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

our own sakes, for our own happiness, and 
therefore neither prayer nor fasting in the sight 
of man is necessary. [The Father knows all we 
need. So we have nothing to ask Him for, 
but only to strive to do His will. The will of 
the Father is this, that we should have no 
malice in our heaxts to any one. ) 

To fast is unnecessary, because men only 
fast to obtain the praise of others, and the 
praise of man is what we should avoid. We 
have only to care for one thing — to live ac- 
cording to the will of the Father, and the rest 
will all come of itself. If we take care for the 
things of the flesh, we cannot take care for the 
things which are of the kingdom of Heaven. 
A man may live without care for food or dress. 
/ The Father will give life. , We only need to 
take care that we are living at the present 
moment after the will of the Father. The 
Father gives even to children what they need. 
We have only to desire the strength of the 
spirit, which is given by the Father. The five 
commandments show the way to the kingdom 
of Heaven. \This narrow path alone leads to 
eternal hope. False teachers, wolves in sheep's 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 179 

clothing, always try to drive men from this 
road. (We must beware of them. It is always 
easy to recognize these false teachers, because 
they teach evil in the name of good. If they 
teach violence and slaughter, they are false 
teachers. By what they teach they may be 
known 7\ 

(it is not he who calls upon the name of God, 
but he who does good work, that fulfils the will 
of the Father) (Thus, whoever fulfils these five 
commandments will have the absolute certainty 
of a true life which nothing can deprive him of, 
but whoever does not fulfil them will not have 
any certainty of life, but a life which he will 
soon lose, so that nothing will remain to him. ) 
The teaching of Jesus astonished and delighted 
all the people, because it promised liberty to 
all. 

The teaching of Jesus was the fulfilment of 
the prophecies of Isaiah, that the chosen of God 
should bring light unto men, should defeat evil, 
and should establish truth, not by violence,(but 
by mildness, humility, and goodness. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TRUE LIFE. 

The fulfilment of the will of the Father gives 
a true life. (Thy will he done.*) 

x The wisdom of life is to understand that we 
live but as the sons of the Spirit, who is our 
Father. Men adopt for their lives the aims of 
the flesh, and through attaining those aims tor- 
ment themselves and others. By accepting the 
teaching of the spirit as to life, and by subduing 
and quieting the flesh, men obtain the full satis- 
faction in the life of the spirit, of the life which 
was appointed for them. It happened once 
that Jesus asked a woman of another faith to 
give him to drink. The woman refused, under 
the pretext that she was of another faith. On 
this Jesus said to her, If thou hadst understood 
that he is a living man who asks thee for drink, 
in whom is the spirit of the Father, thou 
wouldst not have refused, but have sought by 

180 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 181 

doing good to be united in the spirit to the 
Father, and the spirit of the Father would have 
given thee water, not such as that which makes 
men wish to drink again, but water which gives 
eternal life. It is needless to pray to God in 
any appointed place ; those only can serve Him 
in whom is His spirit, by deeds of love, j 

And Jesus said to his disciples, The true 
food of man is the fulfilment of the will of the 
Father. The fulfilment of that will is always 
possible. Our whole life is a gathering of the 
living fruits sown in us by the Father. These 
fruits are the good which we do unto others. 

We have no need to await anything ; our life 
must be a ceaseless act of good to man. \ 

After this Jesus happened to be in Jerusalem. 
There, there was a bathing-place, and a man 
lying doing nothing, a sick man waiting to be 
cured by a miracle. Jesus went up to him and 
said, Wait not to be cured by a miracle, but 
cure thyself as far as thou hast strength, and 
mistake not the meaning of life. The sick man 
listened to Jesus, arose, and went his way. 

On seeing that, the Pharisees began to re- 
proach Jesus for what he had said, and for hav- 



182 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

ing cured the sick on the Sabbath. Jesus said 
unto them : I have done nothing new, I have 
done only what our common Father, the Great 
Spirit, does. He lives and gives life to men, 
and I have done the same. To do this is the 
vocation of every man. (Every man is free to 
live or not to live. ) To live, means to fulfil the 
will of the Father, that is, to do good to others ; 
not to live, means to fulfil our own will, and to 
do no good to othersr>It is in the power of 
every man to do the one or the other, to obtain 
life or to destroy it./ See what the true life of 
man is like ; a master gave his slaves a part of 
a valuable property, and ordered them to labor 
each with his own share. Some did so, and 
others did not, but hid what had been given 
them. The master came to call them to ac- 
count; and to those who had done much he 
gave more than they already had, and from 
those who had done little he took everything 
away. 

The share in the valuable property of the 
master is the spirit of life in man, the son of 
the Father. He who labors in life for the life 
of the spirit obtains eternal life ; while he 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 183 

who labors not, loses the life which was 
given hiim) 

The true life is the common life of all, not 
the life of oner. All must labor for the life of 
others. 

After this Jesus went into the desert, and 
many of the people followed after him. In the 
evening the disciples came and said, With what 
shall we feed all these men ? Among the 
people there were some who had nothing, and 
some who had taken with them bread and fish. 
Then Jesus said to the disciples, Give all the 
bread you have. He took the bread and gave 
it to his disciples, and they gave it to others, 
and then others began to do the same. And 
all ate what others gave, and all were satisfied, 
but they had no need to eat all they had. And 
Jesus said, So also you must do. (Every one 
must not seek to provide himself with food, 
but must give to others what he has, as the 
spirit in man tells him to do. \ 

The real food of man is the spirit of the 
Father. Men live only through the spirit. ) 

We are bound to serve all the functions of 
life, for to live is not to do our own will, but 



184 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING, 

the will of the Father of life. The will of the 
Father is that the life of the spirit which is in 
every man should remain in him, and that all 
should preserve that life till the hour of death. 
The Father is the spirit which is the source of 
all life. Life is only the fulfilment of the will 
of the Father, and therefore for the fulfilment 
of the will of the spirit it is necessarj' to give 
up the things of the flesh. The flesh is food 
for the life of the spirit, and only by consuming 
the things of the flesh can the spirit live. 

After this Jesus chose certain disciples and 
sent them abroad to proclaim everywhere his 
teaching of the life of the spirit. \When he 
sent them he said, Go and preach the life of 
the spirit, and therefore give up beforehand all 
the pleasures of the flesh, have nothing of your 
own. Make yourselves ready for persecution, 
privations, and suffering. You will be hated by 
those who love the life of the flesh, and they 
will torture and kill you, but be not afraid. 
If you fulfil the will of the Father, you will 
have the life of the spirit, and no man can 
take it from you7? 

The disciples set forth, and when they re- 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 185 

turned they announced that everywhere they 
had prevailed over evil. 

Then the Pharisees said to Jesus that his 
teaching, even if it prevailed over evil, was 
an evil itself, inasmuch as those who professed 
it had to endure suffering. To this Jesus 
answered, Evil cannot prevail over evil, for 
evil can only be overcome by good. Good is 
the will of the Father-Spirit, of the spirit 
which is common to all men. Every man 
knows that good exists for him. (If he does 
good to others, if he does what is the will of 
the Father, he does well.) Therefore the fulfil- 
ment of the will of the Father-Spirit is good, 
although it be accompanied with suffering and 
death for those who accomplish it. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A FALSE LIFE. 

And therefore, in order to attain, to a true life, a 
man on earth must abstain from the false life 
of the flesh, and live in the spirit. (On earth 
as in heaven.') 

Fob, the life of the spirit there can be no 
difference between relations and strangers. 

Jesus said that his mother and his brothers 
were nothing to him in their personal relation- 
ship; those only were near to him who fulfilled 
the will of the common Father. 

(The happiness and the life of man depend, 
not upon his family ties, but on the life of the 
spirit.^) Jesus says, Blessed are they who keep 
to the knowledge of the Father. A man who 
lives by the spirit has no home/ > Jesus said 
that no home had been appointed ' for him. 
For the fulfilment of the will of the Father no 
appointed place is needed, it is everywhere and 
always to be found. } 

186 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 187 

The death of the body cannot be terrible to 
a man who has surrendered himself to the will 
of the Father, for the life of the spirit does not 
depend on the death of the body. Jesus says 
that he who believes in the life of the spirit 
cannot fear anything?) 

No cares can prevent a man living the life of 
the spirit. To the man who said that he would 
perform the will of the Father afterwards, but 
that he must first bury his father, Jesus an- 
swered, Only the dead can trouble about bury- 
ing the dead ; the living live always by fulfill- 
ing the will of the FatherTN 
LCare for family and domestic affairs cannot 
prevent the life of the spirit. He who troubles 
himself about the way in which his bodily life 
will be affected by his fulfilling the will of the 
Father, is like the tiller who while he ploughs 
looks behind him and not before^) 

rThe cares for the joys of the life of the flesh, 
which seem so important to men, are really but 
a dream?) The only real business of life is the 
announcement of the will of the Father, atten- 
tion to it, and fulfilment of it. 7 To the reproach 
of Martha, that she was left alone to look after 



188 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

the supper, while her sister Mary, instead of 
helping her, cared only to listen to his teach- 
ing, Jesus replied, In vain dost thou reproach 
her ; trouble thyself with these things if they 
are necessary for thee, but let alone those who 
need not bodily pleasures ; let them do the one 
thing needful in order to live/) 

(Jesus said that he who wishes to obtain the 
true life, which consists in the fulfilment of the 
will of the Father, must before all things give 
up his own personal desires. » Such an one 
must not only refrain from fashioning his life 
according to his own wishes, but be ready at 
any hour to endure all kinds of privation and 
suffering/) 

He who wishes to fashion his bodily life after 
his own will, will ruin the true life which fulfils 
the will of the Father. > 

And there is no advantage in the accumula- 
tion of necessity for the life of the body, if 
such should ruin the life of the spirit., 

The life of the spirit is destroyed by noth- 
ing so surely as by the love of gain, the ac- 
quirement of wealth. Men forget that, what- 
ever riches and property they acquire, they 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 189 

may die at any moment, and that property is 
not needed for their life. Death hangs over 
each of us. Illness, the murderous violence of 
men, accident at any moment may put an end 
to life. CThe death of the body is the unavoid- 
able condition of every instant of life. ) While 
a man lives he should look upon each hour of 
his' life as a respite granted him by favor. We 
should remember this, and not say that we do 
not know it. ) (We know and foresee all that 
happens on earth and in heaven, but we for- 
get the death which we know awaits us every 
moment. ) If we did not forget this, we could 
not give ourselves up to the life of the body; 
we could not depend on it7"> 

Christ went on to say, In order to follow my 
teaching, you must weigh well the advantages 
of serving the flesh and your own will against 
those of fulfilling the will of the Father. (He 
alone who has carefully calculated this can 
become my pupil, but he who has done so 
will not prefer a pretended good and a pre- 
tended life to a true good and a true life. 
(The true life is given to men, and men know 
it, and listen to its call, but, ever led away 



190 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

by the cares of the moment, they lose this 
life) 

The true life is like the feast given by a 
rich man, to which he invited guests. He 
called to them, as the voice of the Father- 
Spirit calls unto all. But some of the guests 
were occupied with their trade, others with 
their household affairs, others again with their 
family, and these came not to the feast.^ The 
poor, however, who had no earthly cares, went 
to the feast and w^ere happy .[. And thus men, 
led away by their care for the life of the body, 
deprive themselves of the true lifey 

Whoever shall not utterly renounce all the 
cares and advantages of the life of the body, 
cannot fulfil the will of the Father, for it is 
not possible partly to serve ourselves and 
partly the Father.) We must calculate whether 
it profit us to serve the flesh, whether we are 
able to fashion our lives as we will. We 
must do as a man does who would build a 
house, or who prepares for war. He calculates 
beforehand whether he will be able to finish 
his house, whether he can hope for victory. 
If he see that both are impossible, he will 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 191 

throw away in vain neither his trouble nor 
his troops, to be ruined for nothing and to 
become the laughing-stock of others. .Were 
it possible to regulate the life of the body 
according to our own wishes, it might be 
worth while to serve the flesh ; but as that 
is impossible, it is better to renounce all that 
belongs to the flesh and serve only the spirit/ 
Otherwise, it is neither one thing nor the 
other. vQur bodily life we do not secure, and 
our spiritual life we lose/) ^Therefore, in order 
to fulfil the will of the Father, we must utterly 
renounce all the works of the flesh. 

The life of the body is as the imaginary 
treasure of another entrusted to us, that we 
may use it so as to procure for ourselves true 
riches. ) If a steward serve a rich man, and 
know that, however long he may serve this 
master, the latter will call him to account 
and leave him with nothing, he does wisely, 
while he still administers his master's wealth, 
to do good to others.^ In that case, if his 
master send him off, those to whom he has 
done good will receive and keep him. Men 
should do the same with the life of the body. 



192 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

The life of the body is the treasure of another 
of which they dispose only for a time. If they 
use that treasure well, they will obtain true 
riches for themselves. 

CjJnless we give up our pretended wealth, we 
shall obtain no real wealth!) iWe cannot serve 
both the false life of the flesh and that of the 
spirit; we must serve the one or the other. 
We cannot strive for riches and serve God. 
What is great in the sight of men is an abom- 
ination unto God. Wealth to God is an evil 
thing. 1 (The rich man is wrong in that he eats 
in abundance and luxury while the beggar 
hungers at his gate. All should know that 
the retaining of property for ourselves is a 
direct non-fulfilment of the will of the Father. 

CThere came once to Jesus a rich Pharisee, 
and he began to boast that he had fulfilled all 
the commandments of the law. Jesus re- 
minded him of the commandment to love 
all men as we love ourselves, saying that this 
was the will of the Father. The Pharisee 
answered that he had ever done this. Then 
Jesus said that it was not true. If thou didst 
wish to fulfil the will of the Father, thou 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 193 

wouldst have no property. It is impossible 
to fulfil the will of the Father, if thou hast 
goods which thou givest not to others. v > 

And Jesus said to his disciples, It seems to 
men that without property they cannot live ; 
but I say unto you that the true life is in 
giving of your own unto others? A certain 
man, byname Zaccheus, heard the teaching of 
Jesus, believed it, and invited Jesus into his 
house, saying, The half of my substance I give 
to the poor, and I will repay fourfold those 
whom I have offended. And Jesus said, Be- 
hold a man in the act of fulfilling the will of 
the Father ; but there is no position in which 
the will of the Father is wholly fulfilled ; our 
whole life is but the attempt to fulfil it.") 

CjGood has no measure of comparative value ; 
we cannot say who has done more, who less. 
The widow who gives her last mite gives more 
than the rich man who gives his thousands. 
Neither can we measure good by utility"?) 

/Let us take as our example of the way to do 
good the woman who took pity on Jesus, and 
heedlessly anointed his feet with the most 
valuable oil. Judas said that she had acted 



194: THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

foolishly, that she had expended what might 
have fed many. But Judas was a thief and a 
liar, who spoke of the good things of the flesh, 
and never thought of the poor. It is not 
worldly advantage, nor the amount of it, that 
is wanted, but that we should at every instant 
of our lives love others and give up to them 
what is our own. 



CHAPTER VII. 

I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE. 

The true food of life is the fulfilment of the will 
of the Father, and union with Him. (Grive 
us this day our daily bread.') 

In answer to the demand of the Jews for 
proof of the truth of his teaching, Jesus said 
that the proof was this, that he taught not 
of himself, but of the common Father of all. 

I teach what is good in the sight of the 
Father of all men, and therefore what is 
good for all men. Do what I say, fulfil my ~ 
five commandments, and you will see that 
what I say is right. The fulfilment of these 
five commandments delivers the world from 
evil, and the commandments are true. It 
is clear that he who teaches, not what is 
his own personal will, but the will of Him 
who sent him, teaches truth. The law of 
Moses teaches the fulfilment of the will of man, 

195 



196 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

and therefore it is full of contradictions ; my 
teaching prescribes the fulfilment of the will of 
the Father, and therefore it leads in all things 
to one end. 

The Jews did not understand him, and 
sought for external evidence that he was the 
Christ spoken of b) r the prophets. To this 
he answered, Seek not to know who I am, nor 
whether your prophets wrote of me or not, but 
take to heart my teaching and what I say to 
you of our common Father. Myself, as a man, 
you need not believe in, but believe in what I 
tell you in the name of the common Father of 
all men. 

No external proof of whence I came is 
wanted, but that you should follow my teach- 
ing. He who follows that shall obtain a true 
life. There can be no proof of the truth of 
my teaching. It is light, and, as light cannot 
be made light, so the truth of what is true can- 
not be proved. (My teaching is light, and 
whoever sees it has light and life, and for him 
all proof is needless.) But whoever is in dark- 
ness must come to the light. J 

But the Jews again asked him who he was 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 197 

after the flesh. He said to them, I am what I 
told you from the first, a man, and the son of 
the Father of life. Only he who understands 
that he is himself a son of this Father (which 
truth I teach), and who fulfils His will, ceases 
to be a slave, and becomes free ; for it is only 
the error which makes us take the life of the 
body for the real life, that prevents our being 
free. ) Only he who understands the truth, that 
life consists only in the fulfilment of the will of 
his Father, is free and immortal. 

(hs the slave does not stay in the master's 
house forever, whereas the son does always, so 
the man who lives as a slave to the flesh does 
not live a life which lasts forever, but the man 
who fulfils in the spirit the will of the Father 
has life eternal. In order to understand me 
you must understand that my Father is not 
your father — is not the one whom you call 
God. Your father is the god of the flesh, and 
my Father is the Spirit of life. Your father is 
the god of vengeance, the slayer of men, he 
who punishes men, and my Father gives life. 
We are, therefore, the children of different 
fathers. I seek the truth, and you desire 



198 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

to slay me, in order to please your god. 
Your god is a devil, the cause of evil, and if 
you serve him you serve the devil. ) My 
teaching is that we are the sons of the Father 
of life, and he who believes in my teaching will 
not see death. The Jews said, How can it be 
that a man shall not die, when all, even those 
most pleasing to God, even Abraham himself, 
died? How canst thou say that thou thyself, 
and those who believe in thy teaching, shall 
not die ? 

To this Jesus answered that he taught noth- 
ing of himself. I speak of that first cause of 
life which you call God, and which is in men. 
This cause I know, and cannot help knowing; 
I know its will and fulfil that will, and of that 
first cause of life I say that it has been, is, and 
will be, and that for it there is no death. 

To require a proof of the truth of my teach- 
ing, is as if proof were required of a blind 
man, why and how he saw light. 

A blind man cured of his blindness, and re- 
maining the same man that he was before, 
could only say that he had been blind, and that 
now he saw. In the same way, the man who 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 199 

once did not, but now does, understand the 
meaning of his life, can say no more. 
£JSuch a man can only say that formerly he 
did not know true happiness in life, and that 
now he does. Like the blind man cured of his 
blindness, if told that he has been cured by 
wrong treatment, that the man who cured him 
is a sinner, that he ought to have been cured 
differently, he can only reply that he knows 
nothing about right or wrong treatment, about 
the sinfulness of the man who cured him, or of 
any other better means of cure ; he knows only 
that he was blind, and that now he can see. 

It is thus with the man who has attained to 
an understanding of the meaning of life, of 
true happiness, and the fulfilment of the will 
of the Father ; he cannot say whether this 
teaching is right or not, whether the teacher is 
a sinner or not, who discovered this teaching, 
or whether a better happiness can or cannot be 
known. He says that formerly he saw no 
meaning in life, and now he does see a mean- 
ing : he knows no more. 

/And Jesus said, My teaching is the awaken- 
ing of a life that was asleep. He who believes 



200 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

in my teaching wakes to eternal life, and is 
alive after death. \ 

My teaching is not to be proved, but men 
follow it because it alone promises life to them. 

As sheep follow the shepherd who gives 
them food and life, so men accept my teaching 
because it gives life to all. As sheep do not 
follow the thief who climbs into the fold, but 
flee from him, so men cannot believe in a teach- 
ing founded on violence and slaughter. My 
teaching is a door for the sheep, and all those 
who follow me find a true life. The good 
shepherd is himself the master, and loves his 
sheep, and gives his life for them; the bad 
shepherd is the hired one, who loves not his 
sheep. The same with teachers : he only is a 
true one who does not pity himself, and he is 
a bad one who makes self his first object. My 
teaching is that we take no care for ourselves, 
but be ready to give up our bodily life for the 
life of the spirit ; this is what I teach and what 
I fulfil. 

The Jews still did not understand him, and 
still sought for proof whether he were Christ 
or not, and consequently whether they should 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 201 

believe him or not. They said, Do not perplex 
us, but say at once, art thou Christ or no ? 
Jesus answered that they should believe not 
words but deeds. By the works which I 
teach, you will understand whether I teach the 
truth or not. Do what I do, and cease to 
weigh words. Fulfil the will of the Father, 
then indeed you all will be united with me 
and with the Father, for I, the Son of Man, am 
what the Father is. I am that which you call 
God, and which I call the Father. I and the 
Father are one. In your scriptures it is written 
that God said to men, Ye are gods. , Every 
man by the spirit is the son of the Father, and 
if he lives to fulfil the will of the Father, he is 
one with the Father. If I fulfil the will of the 
Father, the Father is in me and I am in the 
Father. 

After this Jesus asked his disciples how they 
understood his teaching about the Son of Man. 
Simon Peter answered, Thy teaching is that 
thou art the Son of the God of life, that God 
is the life of the spirit in man. And Jesus 
said to him, Blessed art thou, Simon, in having 
understood this, for man indeed could not have 



202 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

revealed this unto thee, but thou hast under- 
stood this by the revelation of God within 
thee. 

(jThe true life of men is founded on this 
knowledge, and such life knows no deatly 



CHAPTER VIIL 

LIFE NOT IN TIME. 

Therefore a man really lives when he thinks 
only of fulfilling the will of the Father in the 
present, and leaves all thought of the past and 
of the future. (Give us now our daily bread, 
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
them that trespass against us.*) 

To the doubts of his disciples, as to what 
would be their reward for renouncing the life 
of the flesh, Jesus answered,(There can be no 
reward for the man who understands the mean- 
ing of my teaching : firstly, because a man who 
renounces his relations and those dear to him, 
and his property, in the name of my teaching, 
gains a hundredfold more friends and prop- 
erty ;N secondly, because a man who seeks a 
reward, seeks to have more than others, and 
that is the thing most contrary to the fulfil- 
ment of the will of the Father. In the king- 

203 



204 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

dom of Heaven there are neither greater nor 
less ; all are equal. 

Those who seek a reward for doing good are 
like workmen who demand a higher payment 
than what they have agreed for with the mas- 
ter, on the plea that on their own judgment 
they are worthier than others. Reward and 
punishment, abasement and exaltation, do not 
exist for him who understands my teaching. 

No one can be greater or of more importance 
than another, according to the teaching of 
Christ. 

Every one may fulfil the will of the Father, 
but by doing so no one becomes superior to, or 
better than, another. Only kings and those 
that serve them think themselves so. (Accord- 
ing to my teaching, says Jesus, there can be 
no superiors, because he who wishes to be bet- 
ter than others mast be their servant, because 
my teaching is that life is given a man not for 
profit of being served, but for devotion of ser- 
vice altogether for the sake of others, and that 
he who does not follow this teaching, but exalts 
himself, shall but become lower. 

In order not to think of reward and exalta- 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 205 

tion of self, we must understand what is the 
real meaning of life. It lies in the fulfilment 
of the will of the Father, that what He has 
given should be returned to Him. As the 
shepherd leaves the whole flock to search for 
one lost sheep, as a woman turns over every- 
thing to find a lost coin, so the Father shows 
Himself to us as the One who draws back to 
Himself what has once been His. 

(We must understand what makes life real. 
True life appears in this, that what is lost 
returns to the owner, that that which sleeps is 
awakened. . Men who possess a true life, and 
who have returned to the cause from which 
they sprang, cannot, like other men, stay to 
consider who is better and who worse, but, be- 
ing sharers in the life of the Father, can only 
rejoice over the lost one who returns to the 
Father. If a son, who has lost his way and 
wandered from the Father, repent and return 
to Him, surely the other sons of the Father 
cannot envy his joy, and can only be glad of 
the return of a brother/ 

In order to believe in this teaching, to change 
our lives and fulfil it, no external proofs, no 



206 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

rewards, are needed ; we require a clear under- 
standing of what true life is. If men think 
that they are the masters of their own lives, that 
their lives were given them to be spent in the 
pleasures of the flesh, naturally every act of 
self-sacrifice for others will appear to them 
worthy of reward, and unrecompensed the}' will 
give up nothing. If the laborers in a garden, 
who work there on condition of giving the 
fruits to the master, having forgotten that 
agreement, are required to pay according to it, 
they will, when the chance occurs, kill him 
who makes the demand. Those who consider 
themselves to be masters of their own lives, 
think like the laborers, and do not understand 
that life is a gift of the spirit, which requires 
the fulfilment of its will. In order to believe 
and act, we must understand that man can do 
nothing of himself, that if he renounces the life 
of the flesh for the sake of doing good, he does 
nothing for which he can claim thanks and re- 
ward. ) We must understand that a man, when 
he does good, does only what he is bound 
to do, what he cannot but do.y It is only 
by thus understanding his life that a man 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 207 

can so believe as really to be capable of doing 
good works.") 

It is this understanding of life which makes 
the kingdon of Heaven, which is invisible, and 
not such as can be shown anywhere. The 
kingdom of Heaven is in the understanding of 
men. The world lives as it has always done. 
Men eat, drink, give in marriage, trade, and die, 
and all the while apart from these things there 
lives in men's thoughts this kingdom. The 
kingdom of Heaven is the understanding of 
life, like a tree in spring growing of itself. 

(The true life through the fulfilment of the 
will of the Father is not the life which is past, 
is not that which is to come, but the life of the 
present moment, what each of us must do now. 
It follows, therefore, that we must never cease 
in our efforts to carry out this life. Men are 
appointed to care not for the life of the past or 
for that of the future, but for the actual life at 
any moment, and during that life to fulfil the 
will of the Father of all men. If they lose 
their hold of this life through not fulfilling the 
the will of the Father, they cannot again re- 
cover it : the watchman appointed to watch 



208 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

through the night does not perform his duty if 
he fall asleep but for a moment, for in that 
moment the thief may come. Man, therefore, 
must apply all his energies to the present hour, 
for the fulfilment of the Fathers will can be 
achieved only in the present. The will of the 
Father is the life and the happiness of all men. 
Therefore the fulfilment of His will is the good 
of all men. Only those live who do good. 
Good to men (at the present moment) is life, 
and unites us to the common Father. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TEMPTATIONS. 

The delusions of the individual and temporal 
life hide from men the true life, which alone is 
real in union with the Father. {Lead us not 
into temptation.*) 

Man is born with a knowledge of the true 
life through the fulfilment of the will of the 
Father. Children live this life, and in them is 
seen the will of the Father. In order to under- 
stand the teaching of Jesus, we must under- 
stand the life of children, and be what they are. 

Children alwa3 r s live^according to the will of 
the Father, and never break the five command- 
ments. (They would never break them, were 
they not led into temptation by their elders. 
Men corrupt children by leading them into 
temptation, and by teaching them to break the 
commandments. When they do so, they be- 
have like one who, tying a millstone around 

209 



210 THE SPIRIT OF CUBIST'S TEACHING. 

another's neck, casts him into a river. '--Were 
there no corruption, the world would have 
happiness. The world is unhappy only through 
corruption. Corruption is an evil which men 
commit for the pretended good of their tem- 
poral life. (Corruption ruins men, therefore we 
must sacrifice everything in order not to suc- 
cumb to it.). The temptation to sin against the 
first commandment is that men account them- 
selves upright in the sight of their fellows, and 
others as indebted to them. In order not to fall 
into this temptation men should remember the 
infinite debt which all men owe to the Father, 
and that they can only acquit themselves of 
this debt by showing forgiveness to their 
brethren. 

Therefore men must forgive offences against 
themselves, and not be moved to anger even 
though the offender trespass again and again) 
However many times a man is wronged, he 
must forgive and bear no malice, for the king- 
dom of Heaven is only possible where there is 
forgiveness^ ; If we do not forgive, we do the 
same as the debtor did. A debtor, who owed 
much, came to the master and asked to be for- 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 211 

given his debts. The master forgave him all. 
The debtor went forth and tormented another 
man whose debt to him was small. That we 
may have life, we must fulfil the will of the 
Father ; we ask forgiveness from the Father of 
life for that in which we fail to fulfil His will, 
and we hope to obtain that forgiveness. What 
do we, then, when we ourselves do not forgive ? 
We avoid to do for others that which we crave 
for ourselves. 

(The will of the Father is happiness, and evil 
is that which separates us from the Father. 
How should we not, then, try to put an end to 
evil as quickly as possible? for evil ruins us 
and deprives us of life. Evil plunges us into 
bodily ruin.< As much as we undo this evil, so 
much do we acquire of life. If evil does not 
divide us, and we are united in love, we have 
all that we can wish to have. 

The temptation to sin against the second 
commandment is that we believe ourselves to 
have been created for the pleasures of the flesh, 
and that, by leaving one wife and taking an- 
other, we add to those pleasures. In order not 
to fall into this temptation, we must remember 



212 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

that the will of the Father is not that a man 
should find comfort in the beauty of a woman, 
but that, having chosen a wife, he should form 
with her one flesh. (The will of the Father is 
that every man should have a wife, and that 
everv woman should have a husband.^, If each 
man have but one wife, all men will have 
wives, and all wives husbands. Therefore 
whoever changes his wife, deprives a wife of a 
husband, and gives occasion to another husband 
to leave his own wife and take the forsaken 
one. It is allowable to have no wife, but not 
to have more than one, for that is contrary to 
the will of the Father, which consists in the 
union of one husband and one w r ife. 

The temptation to sin against the third com- 
mandment is that men, for the happiness of 
temporal life, have instituted authorities and 
governments, and require oaths to be taken to 
fulfil the obligations imposed by them. In 
order not to fall into this temptation, we must 
remember that we are bound to answer for our 
lives to no one but to God. Men should look 
on these demands of the civil authorities as 
being acts of violence, and, according to the 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 213 

commandment, not to resist evil, tliey should 
give up and fulfil what is required of them, give 
their property and their labor, but they cannot 
give promises and oaths which bind their 
actions. (Oaths which are imposed on men 
make men evil.\ A man who believes his life to 
depend on the will of the Father, cannot prom- 
ise what his actions shall be, because for such a 
man nothing is more sacred than his own life. 

(The temptation to sin against the fourth 
commandment is that men, when they give 
way to envy and revenge, think by such means 
to set others right. \ If a man offend another, 
these men think it necessary to punish him, 
and that it is right to try to condemn him. 

In order not to fall into this temptation, we 
must remember that men are told not to judge 
but to save one another, and that they them- 
selves, committing injustice, cannot judge of 
what is unjust in others. Men can do but one 
thing — teach others by giving an example of 
(purity, forgiveness, and love. 

The temptation to sin against the fifth com- 
mandment is that men think there is a differ- 
ence between their fellow-countrymen and for- 



214 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

eigners, and that consequently it is necessary 
to defend themselves against other nations and 
to injure them. \In order not to fall into this 
temptation, we must know that all the com- 
mandments are expressed in one, the fulfilment 
of the will of the Father, who gives life and 
happiness to all men alike, and we must do the 
same good to all meriTx If other men make a 
difference, and nations, because they account 
each other foreigners, make war on each other, 
each of us notwithstanding should fulfil the 
will of the Father, and do good to every man, 
even though he belong to another nationality 
and make war on our own. 

In order not to fall into any of the errors by 
which man is beset, we must keep our minds 
fixed on spiritual things, and not on those 
which concern the body/ If a man once under- 
stand that only in the will of the Father he has 
the life which he at the moment lives, no priva- 
tion, po suffering, nor even death itself can 
terrify him. Only he really lives who is ready 
at any moment to give his bodily life for the 
fulfilment of the will of the Father?} 

In order that all men might understand 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 215 

that there is no death for those who truly 
live, Jesus said, The life eternal must not be 
understood as being like the present life. 
Time and place are not in the true life which 
is in the will of the Father?) 

Those who have awakened to the true life 
live in the will of the Father, and the will 
of the Father knows neither time nor place. 
They are alive for the Father. If they have 
died for us, they are alive for God. This is 
why one commandment includes all ; love 
with all your strength the origin of life, and, 
as a consequence, every man who bears within 
himself that origin. 

And Jesus said, That origin of life is the 
Christ whom you expect, The understanding 
of this origin of life, for whom there are no 
persons, no time, and no place, is the very 
Son of Man of wdrom I have taught you. 
Whatever hides from men this origin of life 
is seduction. -There is the seduction of Scribes 
and Pharisees, give not way to it ; there is the 
seduction of power, give not way to it; and 
there is again the most dangerous seduction, 
that of the teachers of religion who call them- 



216 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

selves orthodox. Beware of this above all 
others, because these self-styled teachers have 
invented a false system of worship, and would 
allure you from the true God. 

Instead of serving the Father of life by 
works,' they have put words in their place, 
they teach words and themselves do nothing, 
therefore you can learn nothing but words 
from them. QThe Father needs not words but 
deeds. \ They have nothing to teach, because 
they know nothing, but for personal ad- 
vantage they call themselves teachers. \±>ut 
you know that no one can be a teacher of av ..#J 
others.^ There is but one teacher for all, the 
Lord of Life, the spirit. These self-styled 
teachers, thinking to teach others, deprive 
themselves of the true life and prevent others 
from knowing it. They teach men to please 
their God by external rites, and believe that 
oaths can bring men to faith. They care only 
for outward things. If there be but the ap- 
pearance of faith, they care not for what is in 
the hearts of men. They are like pompous 
sepulchres, outside beautiful, and within an 
abomination. They honor the saints and mar- 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 217 

tyrs with words, but they are the same who 
formerly put them to death, and now they 
would kill and torment the saints. From 
them come all the temptations of the world, 
for they offer evil in the name of good. Their 
temptation is the root of all temptation, for 
they have reviled all that is sacred on earth. 
They will remain long unconverted, they will 
continue to practise their deceptions, and to 
increase the sum of evil in the world ; but the 
time will come when all their (temples will be 
thrown down, all their outward worship abol- 
ished, and then men will understand and be 
united through (love in the service of the one 
Father of life, and in the fulfilment of His 
will.; 



CHAPTER X. 

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST TEMPTATION. 

Therefore to get rid of evil, ive must every hour 
of our life be in unity with the Father. 
(Lead us not into temptation.) 

The Jews saw that the teaching of Jesus 
destroyed their state religion and nationality, 
and saw at the same time that they could not 
refute his teaching, so they resolved to kill 
him. The innocence of Jesus and the justice 
of his cause stayed them for a time, but the 
High Priest Caiaphas bethought him of a 
means of having Jesus put to death, notwith- 
standing his innocence. Caiaphas said, They 
had no need to inquire whether this man was 
innocent or not, for the question was whether 
they wished the Jewish nation to remain one 
and indivisible, or that it should perish and be 
lost among others. Our nation will perish and 
be lost, if we let this man alone and do not 
kill him. This argument was decisive, and 

218 



THE SPIRIT OF CUEIST'S TEACHING. 219 

the Pharisees condemned Jesus to death, and 
called upon the people to seize him as soon as 
he appeared in Jerusalem. 

Jesus, though he knew of this, came at the 
feast of Easter to Jerusalem His disciples 
would have persuaded him not to go there, but 
Jesus said, Whatever the Pharisees may wish 
to do unto me, whatever others may do, noth- 
ing can change what is for me the truth. If I 
see the light, I know where I am, and whither 
I go. (Only he who knows not truth can fear 
anything or doubt of anything.. He alone 
stumbles who does not seei) 

So he went to Jerusalem. On the way he 
stopped at Bethany. There Mary poured upon 
him a vessel of costly ointment. Jesus, know- 
ing that bodily death awaited him, said to his 
disciples, who reproached Mary for having 
anointed him with ointment so costly as spike- 
nard, that it was a preparation of his body for 
death. 

When Jesus left Bethany and went to Jeru- 
salem a great multitude met him and followed 
him, and this the more persuaded the Pharisees 
of the necessity of putting him to death. They 



220 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

only waited for an opportunity of seizing him. 
He knew that the slightest imprudent word of 
his against the law would be the pretext for 
his punishment, but notwithstanding he entered 
the Temple and again proclaimed that the wor- 
ship of the Jews, with their sacrifices and 
oblations, had hitherto been false, and preached 
his own doctrines. But his teaching, founded 
on the prophets, was such that the Pharisees 
were unable to find an offence against the law, 
for which he might be condemned to death, all 
the more that the greater part of the people 
were in his favor. 

Now at the feast there were certain heathen, 
and they, hearing of the teaching of Jesus, 
wished to speak with him about it. The 
disciples, when they heard of this, were fright- 
ened. They were afraid that Jesus, in his con- 
versation with the heathen, would betray him- 
self, and anger the people. At first they 
wished to prevent Jesus meeting them, but 
afterwards decided to tell him who wished to 
speak with him. On hearing this Jesus was 
disturbed. He understood that if he preached 
to gentiles he would clearly show that he had 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 221 

cast off the whole of the Jewish law, would set 
the common people against himself, and give 
occasion to the Pharisees for accusing him of 
associating with the hated gentiles. Jesus was 
disturbed, knowing this, but he knew also that 
his vocation was to explain to men, the sons of 
one Father, their unity without distinction of 
faith. He knew that this step would ruin him 
in his bodily life, but that his thus perishing 
would give men a true understanding of life, 
and therefore he said, As the grain of wheat 
must perish for the fruit to grow, so a man 
must lose his life in the body to bring forth the 
fruit of the spirit. He who keeps the life of 
the body, loses the true life ; and he who loses 
the life of the body, receives the true life. I 
am troubled by what awaits me, but truly up to 
this time I have lived only for that, only in 
order to live till this hour; how can I not do 
what I have to do ? Therefore at this hour let 
the will of the Father be shown in me. 

Then, turning to the people, to the heathen 
and the Jews, Jesus spoke out clearly what he 
had said only in private to Nicodemus. He 
said, The life of mankind with its various 



222 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

faiths and various governments, must cease. 
All human authorities must come to an end. 
It is only necessary to understand man's posi- 
tion as a son of the Father of life, and this un- 
derstanding will destroy all divisions and au- 
thorities made among men, and will unite all 
men in one whole. 

The Jews said, Thou destroyest all our re- 
ligion. According to our law, there is a 
Christ, and thou sayest there is only a Son of 
Man, and that he must be exalted. What 
does this mean ? He answered them, To exalt 
the Son of Man means to live by the light of 
the understanding which is in men, in order to 
live, while there is light, according to it. I 
teach no new faith, but only what every man 
knows in himself. Every man knows that he 
has life in him, and every man knows that life 
is giverr to him and to all men by the Father 
of life. My teaching is only that you should 
love the life given by the Father to all men. 

Many of those not in authority believed 
Jesus ; but the great men and the rulers did 
not believe, because they would not judge of 
his speech by the meaning which it had for 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 223 

eternity ; they considered his doctrines only 
by their relation to him. They saw that he 
turned the people away from them, and wished 
to kill him, but were afraid to take him openly, 
so they desired to take him, not in Jerusalem 
and in the light of day, but somewhere 
secretly. 

Then there came to them one of the twelve 
disciples, called Judas Iscariot, and they gave 
him money that he should betray Jesus into 
the hands of the servants when he was not 
with the people. Judas promised them, and 
again joined Jesus, awaiting the time to betray 
him. On the first day of the feast, Jesus and 
the disciples celebrated the passover, and 
Judas, thinking that Jesus did not know of 
his treachery, was among them. But Jesus 
knew that Judas had sold him for a price, 
and, when they were all seated at table, Jesus 
took the bread, broke it into twelve parts, and 
gave a piece to each of the disciples, to Judas 
among the rest, and without naming any one, 
said, Take, eat my body. 

Then he took the cup with wine, and gave it 
to them, that all might drink, and Judas with 



224 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

them, saying, One of you will shed my blood ; 
drink my blood. 

Then Jesus arose and began to wash the 
feet of all the disciples and of Judas, and 
when he had finished, he said, I know that 
one of you will betray me unto death, and will 
shed my blood, but I have given him to eat 
and to drink, and have washed his feet. (l 
have done this to teach you how you should 
behave to those who do you evil. If you act 
thus, you shall be blessed. The disciples still 
continued to ask which of them should be his 
betrayer. Jesus, however, would not name 
him, lest they should punish him. When it 
grew dark Jesus pointed to Judas, and told 
him to go out. Judas rose from the table, 
went out, and no one stopped him. 

Then Jesus said, This is what it is to elevate 
the Son of Man. To do so means to be (loving) 
like the Father, not to those alone who love 
us, but to all, even to those who do ill to us. 
Therefore, do not argue about my teaching, 
do not reason about it as the Pharisees do; 
but do what I have always done, what I have 
now done before you. I give you one com- 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 225 

mandment — love all men. My whole teach- 
ing lies in this, that ye love men always and to 
the end. After this, fear fell on the soul of 
Jesus, and with his disciples in the night he 
went into a garden to hide himself. On the 
way he said to them, You are none of you 
strong, but all timid; when I am taken you 
will all flee from me. Then Peter said, No, I 
will not leave thee, I will defend thee even 
unto death. And all the disciples said the 
same. Then Jesus said to them, If it be so, 
prepare for defence ; collect your stores, for 
you will have to hide ; take arms in order to 
defend yourselves. The disciples said that 
they had two swords. When Jesus heard 
them speak of swords, he was grieved in his 
heart, and going to a solitary place he began to 
pray, telling his disciples to do the same, but 
they did not understand him. Jesus said, 
Father, put an end to the struggle of tempta- 
tion within me. Strengthen me to the fulfil- 
ment of Thy will ; I desire not my own will, 
the defence of the life of my body; I desire Thy 
will, in order not to resist evil. The disciples 
still understood not. He said to them, Think 



226 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

not of the flesh, but strive to raise yourselves 
in the spirit ; the spirit is strong, but the flesh 
is weak. And again he said, Father, if this 
suffering be inevitable, let me bear it ; but in 
all my suffering I desire only that Thy will, 
and not mine, be done. The disciples did not 
understand. Then again Jesus struggled with 
his temptation, and at length conquered it, 
and coming to the disciples said, Now all is 
decided, you may be at peace ; I will not con- 
tend, but will give myself into the hands of the 
men of this world. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE FAREWELL DISCOURSE. 

Personal life is a deception of the flesh, an evil. 
True life is the life which is common to all 
men. {But deliver us from the evil one.) 

Jesus, feeling himself ready for death, went 
forth to give himself up. Peter stopped him, 
and asked him whither he was going. Jesus 
answered, I am going whither thou canst not 
come. I am ready for death, and thou art not 
yet ready Peter said, Not so ; I am now 
ready to lay down my life for thee. Jesus 
answered that a man can promise nothing. 
He said to his disciples, I know that death 
awaits me, but I believe in the life of the 
Father, and therefore do not fear death. Be 
not troubled by my death, but believe in the 
true God and in the Father of life, and then 
my death will not seem terrible to you. If I 
am united with the Father of life, I cannot lose 

227 



228 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

life. It is true that I do not tell you the how 
and the where of life after death, but I show 
you the way into true life. My teaching does 
not speak of what life will do, but points out 
the only true way to life, by union with the 
Father. The Father is the beginning of life. 
My teaching is that life is in the will of the 
Father, and that the fulfilment of His will 
gives life and happiness to all men. Your 
guide, when I am no longer with you, will be 
your knowledge of the truth. While you fulfil 
my teaching, you will always feel that you are 
in the truth, that the Father is in you, and you 
are in the Father. And you, knowing the 
Father within you, will feel that peace which 
nothing can take from you. Therefore, if you 
know the truth and live in it, neither my 
death nor your own can alarm you. 
[ Men imagine that each has a separate exis- 
tence in his own individual will ; but this is 
a deception. The only true life is that which 
acknowledges the source of life in the will of 
the Father. My teaching unfolds this unity of 
life, and represents life, not as consisting of 
separate branches, but as the one tree from 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 229 

which all branches grow. Only he who lives 
in the will of the Father, like the branch on a 
tree, really lives, and he who lives by his own 
will, perishes like the branch which drops off. 
The Father gave away my life for the triumph 
of good, and I have taught you to live for this 
victory. (If you fulfil my commandments, you 
will be blessed^ The commandment in which 
my whole teaching is expressed is this only, 
that all men should (love one another. Love 
consists in the laying down of our bodily life 
for others. There is no other explanation of 
love. When you fulfil my commandment of 
love, you will not be as slaves that without 
understanding obey their master's orders, but 
as free men, free as I myself am, for I have 
explained to you the meaning of life which 
follows on the knowledge of the Father of life. 
You have accepted my teaching, not because 
you have chosen it by chance, but because it 
is the only true teaching, and alone can make 
men free/) 

(The teaching of the world is to do (evil; to 
men ; my teaching is to love one another, and 
therefore the world has hated you as it has 



230 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

hated me. The world does not understand my 
teaching, and therefore it will persecute you, 
and do you evil in the belief that by doing so 
it is serving God. Be not, then, astonished at 
this, and understand that this must be so. 
The world, not understanding the true God, 
must persecute you, and you must uphold the 
truth. 

Do not sorrow because they kill me, for they 
will do so because I uphold the truth. There- 
fore, my death is needed that truth may be 
upheld. My death, in which I do not renounce 
the truth, shall strengthen you, and you will 
understand what is false and what is true, and 
what follows from the knowledge of falsehood 
and of truth. You will understand that the 
error lies in this, that men believe in the life of 
the body, and do not believe in the life of the 
spirit ; that the truth lies in union with the 
Father; and that from this follows the victory 
of the spirit over the flesh. 

When my life in the body has ceased, my 
spirit will be with you. But you, like all other 
men, will not always feel in you the strength 
of the spirit. You will sometimes grow weak 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 231 

and lose its strength ; you will fall into tempta- 
tion, and again at times awaken to the true 
life. You will be often subject to the enslav- 
ing enticements of the flesh, but that will be 
only for a time ; you will have to suffer and to 
be born again in the spirit ; as a woman suffers 
in the pains of childbirth, and then feels the 
joy of having brought a man into the world, so 
will you feel, when, after the enslavements of 
the flesh, the spirit within you is roused again 
to life. \Then you will feel a happiness and a 
peace that leaves you nothing more to desire. 
Know, then, beforehand, that, notwithstanding 
persecution, internal struggles, and the weaken- 
ing of the spirit, the spirit is alive in you, and 
that the only true God is the understanding of 
the will of the Father, which has been unfolded 
to you by me. 

Then addressing himself to the Father-Spirit, 
Jesus said, I have done what Thou hast com- 
manded me, I have revealed to men that Thou 
art the beginning of all. And they have 
understood me. : I have taught them that they 
have all proceeded from one source of infinite 
life, and that therefore they are all one ; that 



232 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

as the Father is in me, and I in the Father, so 
are they one with me, and with the Father. I 
have revealed to them that as Thou in love hast 
sent them into the world, so they through love 
must live in the world. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE VICTORY OF THE SPIRIT OVER THE FLESH. 

Therefore for the man who lives not a personal 
life, but in the common life which is through 
the will of the Father, there is no evil. The 
death of the hody is union with the Father. 
{Thine be the kingdom, the power, and the 
glory.} 

When Jesus had finished his discourse to 
his disciples, he arose, and, instead of escaping 
or defending himself, he went to meet Judas, 
who had brought soldiers to take him. Jesus 
went up to him and asked him why he was 
there. Judas gave no reply, and a crowd of 
soldiers surrounded Jesus. Peter rushed to 
defend his teacher, and, drawing his sword, 
began to fight ; but Jesus stopped him, saying 
that whoso takes the sword shall himself perish 
by the sword, and ordered him to give up his 
sword. Then Jesus said to those who came to 
take him, I formerly went amongst you alone 

233 



234 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

without fear, and now I fear you not, and give 
myself up unto you. You may do with me 
what you will. And then all the disciples 
forsook him and fled. Jesus remained alone. 
The officer ordered the soldiers to bind him 
and take him to Annas, who had been high 
priest, and lived in the same house with 
Caiaphas, the latter being the then high priest. 
It was he who thought of the pretext which 
decided the Jews to kill Jesus — either they 
must kill him or the whole nation must perish. 
Jesus, feeling himself in the hands of the 
Father, was ready for death, and did not resist 
when he was seized, nor did he fear when they 
led him away. Peter, who had just before 
promised Jesus that he would not abandon 
him, but would lay down his life for him, who 
had tried to defend him, now when he saw that 
Jesus was led away to punishment, was afraid 
that he might suffer with him, and to the ques- 
tions of the servants, whether he were not one 
of Jesus' followers, denied it, and went away, 
and only afterwards, when he heard the cock 
crow, did he understand all that Jesus had said 
to him. He understood that there are two 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 235 

temptations of the flesh, that of fear and that 
of using violence ; he understood then that 
Jesus had struggled against these temptations 
when he prayed in the garden, and invited his 
disciples to pray. Now he had himself fallen 
into both these temptations of the flesh against 
which Jesus had warned him ; he had tried to 
resist evil by violence, and to defend truth by 
fighting and evil-doing ; he had been unable to 
withstand the fear of bodily suffering, and had 
denied his teacher. Jesus had not given way 
to the temptations of resistance when his disci- 
ples had secured two swords to defend him 
with, nor to the temptation of fear when he 
stood before the people in Jerusalem in the 
presence of the heathen, nor when the soldiers 
came to bind him and lead him to his trial. 

Jesus was brought to Caiaphas. Caiaphas 
asked Jesus as to his teaching, but Jesus, 
knowing that Caiaphas questioned him not in 
order to know what his teaching was but only 
in order to accuse him, gave no direct answer, 
but said, I have concealed nothing, and conceal 
nothing ; if thou wouldst know what my teach- 
ing is, ask of those who have heard and under- 



236 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

stood it. For this, one of the servitors of the 
high priest struck Jesus on the cheek, and 
Jesus asked why he had struck him. The man 
gave no answer, and the high priest proceeded 
with the trial. They brought witnesses to 
prove that Jesus had boasted of destroying the 
Jewish religion. ■ The high priest again ques- 
tioned Jesus; but he, seeing that the other 
questioned him not to learn anything but only 
to keep up the appearance of justice, answered 
nothing. 

Then the high priest asked him to say if he 
were Christ, the Son of God. Jesus answered, 
Yes, I am Christ, the Son of God ; and now, 
while persecuting me you will see that the Son 
of Man is equal to God. 

And the high priest rejoiced over these 
words, and said to the other judges, Are not 
these words sufficient to condemn him ? And 
the judges answered that they were, and con- 
demned him to death. When they had said 
this, the crowd threw themselves, upon Jesus, 
and they beat him, spat in his face, and abused 
him, but he held his peace. 

The Jews had no power to put a man to 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 237 

death, they required a decision from the Roman 
governor ; and therefore, having condemned 
Jesus according to their law, and abused him, 
they brought him before Pilate, that he should 
order him to be put to death. Pilate asked 
why they wished for his death, and they 
answered, Because he is an evil man. Pilate 
said, If he is an evil doer, judge him according 
to your law. They replied, We desire that 
thou shouldst put him to death, because he has 
sinned against Caesar : he is a rebel, he has set 
the people at variance, he forbids tribute to be 
paid to Caesar, and calls himself the King of 
the Jews. Pilate called Jesus to him and said, 
What means this? how art thou King of the 
Jews? Jesus said, Wouldst thou really know 
what my kingdom is, or dost thou ask me only 
for appearance sake? Pilate answered, I am 
no Jew, and it is the same to me whether thou 
callest thyself the King of the Jews or not ; 
but I ask thee what man art thou, and why do 
they say that thou art a King? Jesus said, 
They say truly that I call myself a King. I am 
a King, but my kingdom is not of this world 
but of heaven. Earthly kings kill and fight, 



238 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

and they have soldiers to aid them, but thou 
seest that I do not resist, though I have been 
bound and beaten. I am a heavenly King, and 
all-powerful in the spirit. 

Pilate said, Then it is true that thou callest 
thyself a King ? Jesus answered, Thou know- 
est it thyself. (Every man who lives in the 
truth is free^ By this alone I live, and for this 
alone I teach ; I reveal to men the truth that 
they are free through the spirit. Pilate said, 
Thou teachest truth, but no one knows what 
truth is, and each has his own conception of 
the truth. And having said this, he turned 
from Jesus and went again unto the Jews, and 
said to them, I find no fault in this man. Why 
would you put him to death ? The priests 
answered that he deserved death because he 
roused the people to revolt. Then Pilate, in 
the presence of the high priests, began to ques- 
tion Jesus ; but Jesus, seeing that he was only 
questioned for form's sake, answered nothing. 
Then Pilate said, I alone cannot condemn him ; 
take him before Herod. 

In Herod's court Jesus gave no answer to 
the accusations of the high priests ; and Herod, 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 239 

taking him for an idle boaster, ordered him to 
be arrayed in a gorgeous garment, and sent 
him back to Pilate. Pilate pitied Jesus, and 
would have persuaded the high priest to par- 
don him, if but in honor of the feast ; but the 
priests held to what they had said, and they 
and all the people after them cried aloud, Let 
him be crucified ! Pilate a second time tried 
to persuade them to let Jesus go, but the 
priests and the people still cried that he must 
be put to death. They said, He is guilty in 
that he calls himself the Son of God. Pilate 
again called Jesus before him, and asked him, 
What does it mean that thou callest thyself the 
Son of God ? Who art thou? Jesus answered 
nothing. Then Pilate said, Why dost thou not 
answer me, when I have power to put thee to 
death or to set thee free? Jesus answered, 
Thou hast no power over me. Power cometh 
only from above. Then Pilate for the third 
time tried to persuade the Jews to let Jesus go, 
but they said, If thou dost not put to death this 
man whom we have shown to be a rebel against 
Caesar, thou thyself art not a friend but an 
enemy of Csesar. On hearing these words 



240 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

Pilate gave way, and ordered Jesus to be put 
to death ; but first he had him stripped and 
scourged, and then again clothed him in a gor- 
geous robe, when he was beaten, mocked, and 
abused. Then they gave him a cross to carry, 
brought him to the place of punishment, and 
crucified him. And when Jesus was hanging 
on the cross all the people reviled him. To all 
this he answered, Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do. And again, 
when death was near, he said, My Father, into 
Thy hands I give my spirit ; and bending his 
head he gave up the ghost. 



THE CONCLUSION. 

TO UNDERSTAND LIFE IS TO DO GOOD. 

The good tidings of Jesus Christ is the revelation 
of the understanding of life. 

iTo understand life we must know that the 
source of life is infinite good, and that conse- 
quently the life of man is the same. To under- 
stand this source we must know that the spirit 
of life in man proceeds from it. Man, who 
before did not exist, was called into being by 
this cause of life. This cause gave happiness 
to man, and therefore happiness is in its nature. 

J In order not to be led away from the source 
of his life, man must keep to the only property 
of this source which he can understand, the 
happiness of the works of love. Therefore the 
life of man must be devoted to happiness, i.e., 
to good works and to love.] Man can do good 
to none but his fellow-men. All individual de- 
sires of the flesh are irreconcilable with the 

241 



242 THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. 

source of good, and therefore man must re- 
nounce them, and sacrifice the life of his body 
to the cause of goodness, and to active love 
for his neighbor J , From the understanding of 
life as revealed by Jesus Christ, follows love to 
our neighborh There are two proofs of the 
truth of this understanding ; one is that for 
those who do not accept it the cause of life ap- 
pears an illusion which leads men to desire 
such life and happiness as they cannot attain ; 
the other is that man in his heart feels love 
and good to his neighbor to be the only true, 
free, and eternal life. / 



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TfcJ 

























